


I Dream of a Simpler Time

by TheFlailing



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-04-24 21:16:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4935640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFlailing/pseuds/TheFlailing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been over fifty years since a catastrophic war rendered the Earth uninhabitable, and the last shreds of the human race are trying to live in the aftermath. James and Natasha have one mission: maintain the defense drones and help them protect the hydro-mines. However, enemies and mysteries alike lurk just beyond the horizon, threatening not only the mission, but the survival of humanity itself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For [Aimée](http://stevebottoms.tumblr.com)
> 
> I blame you, Aimée, this is all your fault.

“My dreams, my dreams! What has become of their sweetness?  
What indeed has become of my youth?”  
\- Alexander Pushkin, _Eugene Onegin_

 

The midday sky was pure and blue, peppered with serene, white clouds as they drifted aimlessly through the sky. Not a thing seemed to stir in the warm, bright rays of the sun.

Out of the silence grew a small whine, high in pitch, but growing in volume. From high in the atmosphere, a twinkle seemed to gleam, growing in size as it descended from the heavens. A strange contraption, it slowly sank towards the earth like a feather through the air. Down and down it hovered until a small platform attached to a small tower came into view. Carefully, the machine unfolded long, spindle-like legs as it landed.

A door opened, and two people emerged from the device. One - tall, broad, and stiff - walked straight towards the tower. The other - shorter, slender, and fluid - hesitated, looking around for a minute, before following suit.

-8-

_Technician's log_

_March 27th 2072_  
  
_Day one! A new adventure! That’s what I keep telling myself. We arrived in the afternoon and the view from the tower is spectacular! I spent an hour on the balcony, just breathing in the air and taking it all in. I know it’s all contaminated and everything, but I couldn’t help it; it tastes so different from recycled air! My mind is still a bit fuzzy from the security wipe, but I don’t mind. Everything seems fresh and new, and it’s all so exciting! I’m looking forward to seeing what’s down there tomorrow. I mean, I know it was all destroyed over fifty years ago, but still, the world continues to spin, right? There must be something left._  
  
-8-

_Technician's log_

_March 28th 2072_  
  
_I had a dream last night. It was so vivid it almost felt... real. I don’t know if this is normal, or if it’s just a side effect from the wipe. It might just be a coping mechanism, something to make up for all the empty space for where my memories used to be. Maybe being here has triggered something inside me._  
  
_I dreamt of a busy city street, filled to the brim with people. I can’t remember any of their faces, but it was full and loud and it felt so alive! Is this what it was like, before the war? How could I have known this place? Everything was long gone before I was even born, and if I’d seen pictures, I shouldn’t be able to remember these places so vividly, right?_  
  
_I don’t know. Maybe I’m just fantasizing. Maybe, this is my brain’s way of wishful thinking. Who knows?_  
  
_We’ve got a busy day ahead of us – we’re surveying the sector and getting familiar with our assignment. This is going to be exciting!_  
  
-8-  
  
_Technician's log_

_July 24th 2073_  
  
_I had another dream last night. It was... different._  
  
_I mean, I’ve dreamt of people before, but nobody specific, no one whose face I could recall after waking._  
  
_But tonight... I dreamt of... him. I don’t know how else to describe it._  
  
_He felt so... familiar, like I knew him, somehow, yet we’ve never met. It felt so real, like a word that’s on the tip of my tongue but can’t find. I could just feel the familiarity between us, but I don’t know his name. It felt less like a dream... and more like..._  
  
_No, that’s not possible._  
  
_How can that be?_  
  
-8-  
  
_Technician's log_

_March 10th 2077_  
  
_In seventeen days, it will be our five year anniversary. It’s been almost five years, and yet I’m still haunted by these visions._  
  
_Most of them are scenic, and I love exploring the world with my unconscious imagination. I don’t dream of him often, but when I do, I can never forget it. After all these years, I feel a connection with him, kind of like a companion, almost. It’s been so long since we’ve been here alone that it feels nice to have a bond with another human, even if I’ve only met him in my dreams._  
  
_The dream was brief, just like every other time, just a meeting, a glimpse, a moment in time; it couldn’t have lasted more than 5 seconds. All we do is greet each other; he waves and smiles at me._

_I woke up and couldn’t sleep after that. I spent the rest of the night reading._  
  
_The sun is rising. I’ve been up for a while, so hope I won’t be too tired for our rounds today._  
  
-8-  
  
Mist poured over the mountain ridge and rolled down the snow laden granite. The air was cold and nipped at the skin as it blew over the peak and flung droplets of water into the air. In the first rays of the morning sun, the vapour twinkled like tiny rainbows dancing in midair. It was always cold in early spring, but almost always sunny, and basking in the glittering sunshine was enough to keep warm, even at the top of the mountain range.  
  
Anchored into the rocky crest were five thick, sturdy struts. The metal protruded from the mountain like spines on the back of a dragon. Reaching into the sky above, they met at a point to support a cube building. Built of concrete and glass, it seemed to hover above the world like a celestial lookout. With a grand view of the sweeping white slopes and murky green valley below, it might have been the envy of the gods in the distant past.  
  
A figure stood on the balcony, leaning against the glass panes of the barrier. Facing away from the rising sun, it gave the perfect view of the land below as the morning sun slowly crept forward. Hidden in the shadow of the building, the figure was dressed only in a pair of short cotton pants and a loose, white tank top. Long, cardinal red hair fluttered in the wind as it blew in from behind, whipping strands into Natasha’s face.  
  
With a deep breath, the woman took in a hearty lungful of icy air – it prickled and stung inside her chest, waking her from within.  
  
The sound of sliding glass behind from her caught Nat’s attention, and she was soon joined on the balcony by her companion. She knew the man's look without needing to turn – he was tall, with broad, muscular shoulders and long, shoulder-length unkempt chestnut hair. Despite the chill, he was clad only in a tight fitting pair of boxer-briefs, showing off a sculpted chest, stomach, and arms.  
  
“Where’d you go?” asked a deep, gruff voice as strong arms wrapped around Nat’s waist. With a light tug backwards, the slightly shorter woman’s back came to rest against her partner’s warm, bare chest.  
  
“Couldn’t sleep,” Nat replied.  
  
The man hummed sleepily in response. A deep, earthy scent wafted through Natasha’s senses as he leaned down to nuzzle the crook of her neck from behind, his overnight stubble scratching her skin and making it itch.  
  
“C’mon, we should grab a shower and some breakfast,” Nat said.  
  
“Can’t we just stay like this a little longer?”  
  
“James,” the redheaded woman warned.  
  
“Fine, fine,” said James with a sigh.  
  
Taking a large hand in hers, Natasha wove their fingers together as she pulled away and turned back towards the house. The entire upper level exterior was built of thick, glass walls, and bright, golden rays streamed into the building, casting the living room in a canary yellow glow. Natasha weaved between the low, square coffee table and the soft, cream couch, past the open kitchen, through to the staircase that led up to the bedroom and into the bathroom.  
  
The black floor tiles were cool to the touch and pricked the soles of Natasha’s feet as she lightly stepped across the bathroom, shedding her clothes as she went. James was close behind, stepping out of his underwear with a barely suppressed grin. His tall, powerful body was languid and his carefully toned muscled rippled subtly as he moved. Sweeping the glass panels aside, Natasha entered the spacious shower stall and keyed her desired temperature and water pressure settings into the control panel on the far side.  
  
James stepped into the stall just as the water began to flow, and got a face full of water. Shocked by the unexpected deluge, he stumbled back a step with an expression of bewilderment that had Nat holding her belly with laughter.  
  
“Smooth,” she teased as she retrieved the soap.  
  
Twenty minutes later, feeling refreshed and clean, the two of them padded into the kitchen to grab a quick breakfast. James placed a frying pan onto the stovetop to make eggs as Natasha sliced and buttered the bread. The two of them worked side by side, brushing shoulders as they went. Nat hummed, and in the corner of her eye, she caught James smiling at her, his long, still-damp hair falling in front of his face. It took only a handful of minutes to finish cooking, and soon Nat was taking her seat across from James at the dining table.  
  
“Bon appetite,” James said with a grin as he lifted a forkful of eggs to his mouth.  
  
Nat was smiling back at him about to take a bite of her own, when an image flashed across her mind.  
  
Immediately, she knew it was from a dream – she remembered each and every one of them in such vivid detail. The scene flickered across her consciousness like a flip book or the remnants of a film – sitting in a place so foreign and yet so familiar. It was indoors, a large hall filled with white light and lined with row upon row of long tables. She was sitting at a table near one end of the room, the space filled to the brim with people, all wearing blue jumpsuits, laughing and holding or sitting in front of a tray laden with food. She heard a laugh, hearty and deep and full-bodied, and Nat looked up to see a man not too far away – him. His head was tilted back and his hand grasped his heart as he laughed with his whole body. Blonde hair was cropped short, his blue jumpsuit stretched tight across his broad chest and his arms nearly bursting from the sleeves.  
  
The vision lasted only an instant, and with a blink, Nat was sitting at the dining table once more, its polished white surface reflecting the orange rays of the rising sun. Through the thick glass windows, she could see the balcony, the small water reserve that also served as a swimming pool, and beyond that, the clouds the dropped into the valley below.  
  
“Nat? You okay?” James asked as he reached for a slice of toast.  
  
The redheaded woman blinked a few times more. “Yeah. I’m fine. Just.” She stopped.  
  
“Just what?”  
  
“Do you ever wonder,” Nat began as she put down her fork.  
  
James’ hand hesitated for a fraction of a moment from retrieving the butter knife. Nat pretended not to notice the way his face tightened. “No,” he said curtly.  
  
Nat pursed her lips. “You didn’t even let me finish.”  
  
“I don’t need to, I know what you’re going to ask. No, I don’t have dreams. No, I don’t wonder about my memories before the wipe.” The dark haired man took a large bite of his toast. “We’ve talked about this.”  
  
Nat picked up her fork and speared another piece of fried egg. _No, we haven’t,_ she thought to herself as she listened to her partner’s aggressive chewing, _because you refuse to actually have a civilized conversation about it._  
  
“Orbital Command will be within communications range shortly,” James said brusquely as he shoveled the remains of his breakfast into his wide mouth.  
  
With a quiet sigh, Nat did the same and followed James into the kitchen to help with the dishes.  
  
They dressed without speaking; the only sounds that warded off complete silence were the brushing of wind against the glass, the rustling of heavy uniform fabric, the popping of clasps being snapped together, and the soft whine of zippers. Nat finished half a minute ahead of James, and strolled out of the room as he was attaching his tools to his belt.  
  
The spiraling staircase in the exact centre of the house spanned all four levels – maintenance, storage, and workshop on the bottom, kitchen, living room, and medical bay above that, bedroom, bathroom and lounge on the third floor, and finally solarium, communications, and training room on the top. Nat descended the steps smoothly, her boots clicking on the metal surface until she reached the bottom.  
  
The workshop was lit by the harsh glow of artificial light. Split into half, James’ section was littered with tools and spare parts. Pieces of metal and half assembled frames were scattered across the floor while the work benches and tables were laden with all sorts of small pieces and gadgets. Natasha’s section, by contrast, was a grid-organized mass of computer monitors and stacks of hard drives, countless little buttons flashing and blinking.  
  
Heading down the walkway that separated the two workshops, Natasha went straight to the door on the far end. Keying in the unlock sequence, the reinforced heavy door slid aside, revealing a small vestibule. On the other side was an even heavier set of doors that opened to the outside.  
  
A strong gust of wind whipped past Natasha as she stepped onto the catwalk. Thin railing was the only thing that prevented her from accidentally falling hundreds of meters to her death on the icy, stony precipice below. On the other end of the walkway, sticking out from the side of the building, was the landing pad. Square and plain, it held proudly the heli-jet like a child might hold a dragonfly in the palms of their hands.  
  
Glinting in the sun, the heli-jet was perched delicately atop the platform on four lissome legs and resembled a large damselfly. The cockpit consisted of two overlapping glass spheres, one for each pilot. Connected to it was a long narrow hold that tapered into a tail that housed the steering propeller. Extending from the top of the hold at the junction where it met the cockpit were two slender wings that housed three rotatable turbines each.    
  
As she was pulling on her helmet, James appeared beside her. Together, they mounted the heli-jet and began booting up the operational systems.  
  
A status display projected onto the wide glass windshield. Status and navigation bars lines the periphery of the display, and in the centre, a large glowing red box appeared. OPERATOR IDENTIFICATION, it read.  
  
“Natasha Romanov, Software Technician Four-Nine. Passcode BLACK WIDOW,” Nat said as she clipped her seat buckles into place.  
  
The box turned green and a jolly warble played before it disappeared off the screen.  
  
Beside her, she heard James clear his throat and say, “James Barnes, Mechanical Technician Four-Nine. Passcode WINTER SOLDIER.” His screen turned green and played the same sound of affirmation.  
  
“T minus three minutes, twenty-seven seconds until communications comes online,” Nat noted as she warmed up the engines. The heli-jet hummed pleasantly.  
  
James acknowledged with a nod and he performed his half of the systems check. “Ready for takeoff,” he replied.  
  
Natasha smirked. Although he would never admit it, she knew that he was mildly afraid of flying. Strange, when it was the most efficient and most frequently used mode of transport in their line of work. He tried to hide it, and James did a good job, but when you spent every waking and sleeping moment beside someone for five years, you learn to read a person. Plus, Natasha liked to think that she was naturally observant.  
  
The console chirped as James opened the navigation system. Grids and maps flashed onto his screen, displaying Sector 49 in its entirety. A glowing green dot in the centre indicated home base, and a small cruciform icon indicating the heli-jet blinked beside it. The mountains cut a diagonal from the Western edge of the map down to the south, cutting off the just under an eighth of the sector. The valley sloped down from the ridge, dropping away into flat, barren marshes that stretched to the edge of the ocean on the Eastern edge of the sector. Above the sea were four large diamond icons, each attached to a large serial number with several status bars displayed beneath it – the hydro-mines. Finally, about a dozen smaller blue dots blinked.  
  
“All drones present and accounted for,” James said as he typed at his keyboard.  
  
“Good, looks like a good start to a nice day. Let’s hope it stays that way,” Nat replied as she gripped the steering modules. Gently pulling back, she eased the engines into gear and the heli-jet rose smoothly into the air. The landing apparatus disengaged, and the hydraulics hissed quietly as the four legs folded themselves neatly underneath the vehicle.  
  
“Let’s go see how everyone slept through the night, shall we?”  
  
With a flick of her wrist, the heli-jet dove to the side; Natasha suppressed a small grin as James’ jaw muscles tightened almost imperceptibly. With expert precision, the software technician angled the aircraft towards the east, and they rocketed towards the shoreline.  
  
A soft ping sounded through the cockpit and a small light flashed on the display. A moment later, a small video feed opened in the corner of each of their screens.  
  
“Technician Team Four-Nine, this is mission control; how are we doing this fine morning?” said a female voice in (what she had been told was) a British accent.  
  
Natasha smiled to herself; it was the same greeting she’d gotten every morning for the last five years. “Only another day in paradise,” she replied.  
  
James grunted in response.  
  
“How’s the space up there, Peggy? Getting cramped up there yet?” Nat continued.  
  
The woman on the video feed smiled charmingly. Her flowing brown hair cascaded past her shoulders and her eyes glimmered with mirth. “I’m doing well, thanks,” she said, her cherry red lipstick glossy even in the grainy video feed. “We’ve got all the space in the world but ironically, no breathing room.”  
  
James rolled his eyes, but he was smiling along with the two of them as they laughed at the joke. There’s something to be said about familiarity.  
  
Below them, brown muddy swampland zipped by as they travelled. The entire valley was flat. Fields of wild grasses swayed in the breeze and the occasional glimpse of water reflected the sunlight. Nat sighed. In the five years that they’d been stationed here, there was hardly so much as a glimpse of any creature larger than a cat (except for, of course, the Chits), let alone any human. In the distance, the white crests of waves crashing against the shore lined the horizon.  
  
“Hydro mine stats are within optimum operational range,” James said from beside her. His screen was filled with diagnostics and pages of overnight reports. “Uploading logs: March 10th 2077, day 1809.”  
  
Peggy hummed. “Everything looks to be in order. Please confirm visual of hydro mines FB0314, FB0317, FB0320, and FB0326.”  
  
“Almost there, Pegs, hold your horses,” James grumbled.  
  
Brown and deep green swaths abruptly ended in a rocky shore, and suddenly the vastness of the ocean swallowed up the view before them. Sea green water churned beneath them, spraying frothy yellow foam into the air.  
  
Not too far in the distance, Natasha could see the first of the four hydro mines in their sector. Large, metallic structures, each mine was the size of a small island. Painted in black and red, they hovered above the surface of the ocean. Shaped like floating diamonds, the hydro mines sucked seawater up from underneath in a thick column that disappeared into the machine’s depths. As they approached, a heavy rumble sounded through the air, making Nat’s chest vibrate with the thick sound.  
  
“Visual of hydro mines confirmed,” Nat said. FB0326 was the closest of the quartet, with the other three visible in a long looping arch that followed the coast northwards.  
  
“Excellent,” said Peggy.  
  
“Beginning perimeter check and drone physical examination protocols,” James said as Nat directed the heli-jet to make a sweep of the four stalwart machines.  
  
The lithe woman allowed a small smile to creep onto her face as the two technicians began their day. Another day in paradise indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So for those of you who got the references, YES, THIS IS INDEED AN OBLIVION!AU/CROSSOVER! For those of you who haven't seen the movie, DON'T WORRY IT'S OKAY I'm writing the work so that it can be a standalone piece too, so please don't be scared away D=
> 
> Okay, okay, I know this starts off as Nat/Bucky, but I swear it's temporary. People who've watched the movie know why; people who haven't, you'll see as we progress =) I'm writing this piece as I go cause GODAMMIT I needed to post it and also getting feedback will help motivate me to write more XD I don't know how many chapters it'll end up being, and I hesitate to make a guess at the length cause I always seem to underestimate my works, but please don't worry, I promise I'll finish! I hope you all enjoyed it! Please let me know what you think, I love hearing from you guys!
> 
> Love,  
> Flailing


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for [ Ghost-Fish ](http://ghost-fish.tumblr.com/): thank you for helping me survive the last three weeks ;_; it's been hell but you made things better (read: bearable)

 

 

“There will be today, there will be tomorrow, there will be always, as there was yesterday, and there was the day before...”  
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

  
  
Nat watched James roll his shoulders as he stood from his crouching position amongst the tall grasses. Even though the early afternoon air was cool, the man had unzipped his gray and black uniform jacket, the light breeze making the man’s white undershirt billow softly against his muscular frame. With a heavy sigh, James wiped a grease-covered hand across his forehead, swiping away the sweat and leaving a smear of bright blue and green oil in its wake. The gentle sound of rustling grasses rose up from around them as the wind murmured around them, a muted sonata that played over the field.  
  
“Well, it’s not a hardware issue,” James said as he walked towards her. She offered him a water canteen, and he snatched it up and took a long swig.  
  
“Hmm,” Nat said as she pushed away from the heli-jet, “diagnostics said there were a few damaged components.”  
  
James wrinkled his nose in distaste. “A few, but none of them were serious,” he said as he took another gulp of water, the excess leaking from the corner of his mouth and trickling down the front of his throat.  
  
Nat frowned. “Software issues usually don’t manifest themselves in-field,” she said as she walked passed the taller technician.  
  
A long trail of uprooted dirt streaked across the ground like a scar upon the surface. At the head of the ditch sat Drone 192, its large, spherical body half buried in the ground. When the machine had gone down, it must have been flying pretty high for it to have made such a mess when it finally made impact.  
  
Natasha walked to the drone, her portable computer in hand, and wondered how exactly it had been taken down. From the height it must have been flying, it would have been a difficult target from the ground. The Chitauri no longer had the means to fly – thank god – but she couldn’t comprehend how they’d managed to land such a difficult skill shot.  
  
Having come down only hours earlier, the gleaming metallic hull of the drone was still steaming. The white paint on its outer layer of armour was scuffed, dented, and smeared with dirt. With the diameter that was just larger than the bed she and James shared, the surveillance drone was certainly a feat of engineering. In front, four large, almost telescopic cameras peered out from a rectangular slot. Underneath its ‘eyes’ was a plate emblazoned with the number 192. A dual set of plasma laser pulse guns pointed forwards from either side of the drone. From the front, Nat supposed it looked like a strange sort of face.  
  
Walking around the globe, she arrived at its rear. James had removed the armour shielding at the back so that they could access the mainframe damaged components.  
  
Taking a long, thick cable from her equipment pouch, Nat connected her computer to the data point which was thankfully undamaged. Her screen immediately lit up with software reports.  
  
With a gloved hand, Natasha tucked the locks of her amber hair behind one ear and lowered herself to the ground. Sitting cross-legged, the foliage of the fields swayed over her head, blocking out her view of the surroundings. With the computer in her lap, enclosed in this small circle of the world, she cracked her fingers and got to work.  
  
-8-  
  
An hour later, Nat had isolated the problem. There was a foreign program running amuck in the memory drive and it was wreaking havoc on the operating system. It was very strange; nothing like Nat had encountered before. The technician’s forehead was creased. How had this malignant program found its way into this drone’s software? Where had it come from? It just didn’t make any sense...  
  
The stiff muscles in her back and neck protested as Nat stood from her sitting position. Taking a moment to stretch, she closed her eyes as a tender spring breeze blew strings of her red hair all over her face. The sun had shifted towards the horizon since she last looked, its warm rays gently kissing her skin. With a lungful of new air, Natasha glanced around, looking for her partner, finally spotting him by the heli-jet.  
  
James had climbed up on top of the roof. He was seated facing away from her, his knees drawn up to his chest with his elbows and arms resting on top of them. As the wind played with James’ long, dark hair, Natasha watched him stare blanklessly at the far ends of the skyline.  
  
Quietly, Natasha made her way over to the gleaming metal insect. As he neared the machine, James caught sight of movement and turned.  
  
“All done?” he asked.  
  
“Yep, it’s ready to go.”  
  
James nodded in response. In one swift movement, the man rose from his position and jumped with a surprisingly feline grace. Sailing through the air more silently than should have been possible, the large man landed gracefully with a muted thump upon the wet soil. For a well-built man of his size, James certainly moved with more fluidity and more soundlessly than one might expect.  
  
“Alright,” said James as he dusted the dirt from his gloves and ash-gray uniform pants.  
  
Together, the two technicians made their way over to the half-buried spherical droid. Patiently, Natasha waited as James deftly replaced the hardware components and screwed the large plate of armour back onto the hull. Complete once more, Drone 192 was in combat condition.  
  
James looked Nat in the eye. “Ready?” he asked.  
  
The redhead nodded.  
  
Lifting a small access panel, James typed in the reboot key and stepped back to join Nat by her side.  
  
Immediately, the drone began to whirr and buzz. They could hear gears and motors engaging and clicking into place, and then the sound of the engines coming to life. Lighted panels flickered on and began to glow, casting a faint blue hue to the soiled white armour plating.  
  
“ _Beedoooop_ ” the drone chirped as its thrusters initiated. Slowly, the drone rose a meter into the air like an inflated balloon. It emitted a faint whirring as the 360° scanners swept the surroundings.  
  
“ _BVAAAAAAAAAAARRR_!”  
  
Natasha tensed as the drone swiveled around in place to face them, four sets of cameras focused on their faces – they’d been doing this for almost five years, yet it still unnerved her when a drone had her locked in its sights, the four sets of pulse guns automatically taking aim.  
  
Beside her, James squared his shoulders. “Mechanical Technician Four-Nine. Passcode WINTER SOLDIER,” he said, clearly projecting his voice above the hush sounds of the marsh around them.  
  
“Software Technician Four-Nine. Passcode BLACK WIDOW,” Natasha said immediately after.  
  
The drone paused for a millisecond while it processed their identification. Apparently satisfied, it made a high-pitch trill and retracted its guns, tucking them into flight mode. “ _Beedoooop_ ,” it said once more. A slight whirring indicated jet propulsion warming up, and then a second later, the sleek sphere rocketed up into the sky.  
  
A gust of wind from the force of the drone’s take-off stirred up dust and bits of dead leaves into the air, and the two technicians brought their hand up to shield their faces.  
  
“Well, that’s one down,” said James as he dusted himself off and turned to head back to the heli-jet.  
  
“One more to go,” Nat replied as she turned to follow.  
  
Sitting in the cockpit of the heli-jet, Nat buckled herself in. Piloting through the calm afternoon skies was easy; in the seat beside her, James was reviewing the status of Drone 190 as they flew towards its location. Chitauri activity had been rather low recently, which was why last night’s flurry of activity was unexpected. Three drones had been taken down overnight, all in different locations. The first two were remote; Drone 187 had been taken down in the foothills at the base of the mountain. One of its thrusters had been shot during mid-flight, and it hand unluckily come down against a rocky ledge. The explosion caused by damage to its fuel cell had taken out a good chunk of the stone and left nothing but blackened quartz and charred ashes. Drone 192 was also still on Natasha’s mind – where on Earth that malignant programming had come from was a mystery.  
  
Below them, the rolling grasses of the marshlands slowly gave way to sparse fields, and then a minute later, the ruins began.  
  
Natasha had only glimpsed pictures of what the great cities of Earth once looked like, and that was before the wipe, so she really didn’t know what it must have been like before the war. It was hard to imagine what this city must have been like in its heyday, instead of the hollow wreckage that lay where a proud city had once stood. Acres of cracked concrete stretched far and wide at the edge of the continent, the waves of the toxic ocean lapping at its edges.  
  
Most of the buildings had been reduced to rubble at the very beginning – the Chitauri had wasted no time upon their arrival. A seismic detonation had been launched from space into the Earth’s crust, causing massive earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis that decimated the globe. The few buildings that had survived the initial blast and the test of time now stood as tall pillars of twisted steel, broken glass, and cracking cement. Like skeletons rising from the ground, empty and stripped of all life, the remnants of what was once the human civilization looked decrepit and pathetic.  
  
Referencing the on-screen map, Natasha noted Drone 190’s position, and adjusted accordingly. Several minutes later, they were descending upon what appeared to have once been an array of living quarters. The heli-jet landing gear touched down on uneven ground. What had once been black asphalt had crumbled in most places, leaving only a handful of large pieces. Weeds, wild grasses, and shrubs had begun overgrowing the area, covering the ground in a blanket of muted greens.  
  
James unbuckled his straps and jumped out of the cockpit with an unceremonious thump. Nat watched him check the tracking device before throwing his tool bag over a shoulder and striding off to the left. The mechanical technician was always in a rush to finish the job, a fact that Natasha sometimes found upsetting. Although he’d never said as much, the red-headed technician knew that her partner hated it here. She didn’t know why, but she could tell that he did.  
  
Landing solidly on the ground, Natasha took a moment to absorb her surroundings. It was rare for them to visit the same location twice – drones didn’t fall out of the sky in any particular pattern, after all – and she liked taking the time to see the world. As uninhabitable as it was, she still felt that Earth was her home, and despite its battle scars, she thought it was still beautiful.  
  
When she caught up to him, James was picking his way over what had once been a small building, grumbling quietly as he went.  
  
“Found our drone yet?” she asked as she skipped over decaying mounds.  
  
“No, but we’re supposed to be close. Tracker says it should be right here.”  
  
Natasha hummed in response. It shouldn’t have been too difficult to find – nothing grew above waist-height, and the terrain was mostly flat, so visibility wasn’t much of an issue. Using her hand to shadow her eyes from the sunlight, the software technician carefully surveyed the area.  
  
On her second sweep, there was a rustling sound to her right. Faster than the blink of an eye, Nat drew the plasma pistol that was holstered to her hip and aimed. Not two steps away from her, the foliage trembled, and a moment later, a small creature appeared.  
  
Nat blinked.  
  
The small animal was the size of a pair of combat boots, and tentatively walked forwards on all four limbs. It had short fur that looked to be orange and brown under the mud and dirt that covered its body. Triangular, pointed ears were perched upon a round face bearing large eyes and whiskers.  
  
“ _Meow_ ,” the creature softly murmured.  
  
Nat lowered her pistol and crouched down. “Hello there,” she cooed softly. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she thought she might have seen a picture of one of these things.  
  
Hesitantly, the animal crept forwards.  
  
“That’s it, I’m not going to hurt you,” Nat said, holding out a hand.  
  
“ _Meow_ ,” the creature said once more.  
  
It was close now, almost within reach, and Natasha had the urge to pet its soft fur. She was about to stretch out to do just that when the crack of a rifle split the air; a tiny puff of dirt exploded not a hands width away.  
  
Flinching at the sound, the creature jumped into the air and disappeared into the brushes with a shrill cry.  
  
Heavy footfalls came from behind her.  
  
“Nat, wh-”  
  
The red-headed woman sprang to her feet and turned on the spot. “What the hell was that?” she demanded, cutting off whatever James had been about to say.  
  
James stood, the rifle hanging by his side in one hand, with a look of shock on his face for a split second before it morphed into one of anger. “‘What the hell was that?’ More like: What the hell were you thinking?!?”  
  
“I was thinking that I’ve never seen a creature like that before!”  
  
“It could have been dangerous!”  
  
Nat gawked. “Are you serious? It looked harmless!”  
  
“It could have bitten you!” James bellowed, throwing his arms down for emphasis.  
  
“You don’t know that!” she countered.  
  
“I wasn’t going to take the chance! Natasha, we’re less than two weeks away from finishing our deployment! Who knows what kind of pollutants that thing might have been carrying! If you had been bitten and gotten contaminated, we’d have been stuck here for god knows how long! We are _this close_ to going home, Nat!”  
  
“Home? _Home_?” Nat sputtered, “ _This_ is our home, James; _Earth_ is our home. Not Orbital command, not the Station, and not some piece of rock orbiting Jupiter! I don't care what the other say; we shouldn't have to be relocating halfway across the solar system!”  
  
James pursed his pale lips into a thin line, his jaw tightening, and his eyes turned hard. “It’s not home anymore,” he said, low and dangerous. “Maybe it was home once, but not since those fucking aliens arrived. It’s nothing but a nuclear wasteland now.”  
  
Natasha exhaled sharply. “You can’t honestly tell me you believe that,” she snapped as she folded her arms over her chest.  
  
“I’m not having this argument with you again. Drone 190 is close.” The mechanic aggressively holstered the rifle to the strap on his back and turned away, ending the conversation.  
  
Nat fumed, throwing a murderous glare at James’ retreating back.  
  
It was then that she noticed something.  
  
In the near distance was a small outcrop of bushes. The foliage was densely packed, which made it difficult to see that several of the plants had been snapped in half.  
  
Curious, Natasha said, stepped towards it.  
  
Less than a minute later, the technician was standing at the edge of the clump of bushes. Coincidentally, the shrubs had grown at the top of a small hill that hid behind it the crash-landing site they were searching for.  
  
Drone 190 had better luck than the older sibling who had been smashed to pieces, yet less luck than a soft landing in the marshes. Sitting at the bottom of its still-smoking crater, the poor thing had broken through the ground and wound up in the belly of what appeared to have been an underground chamber.  
  
“Hey, I found it,” she called. A few seconds later, James was at her side. She could sense that he was still tense from their argument, but at least now they had a distraction.  
  
“Fucking drones,” James grumbled as he inspected from afar. While it was still technically intact, Nat could see that the once-whole armour plating had been cracked in several places, and there were even two jagged, gaping holes where chunks of it had been dislodged.  
  
“At least it looks salvageable,” Nat said as she crouched down to find a path.  
  
It took them longer than she anticipated to navigate their descent into the chamber. When they reached the bottom, Nat’s heavy boots landed on a soft, moldy floor. James immediately went to the drone, while she took a moment to look around  
  
The space likely hadn’t been touched in over half a century. The far side of the room housed leaning and decaying rows of shelves, and a thick layer of dust and dirt covered steel and concrete surfaces that hadn’t been obliterated by the impact. At the floor beneath lay a pile of shattered bottles and jars. What must have once been walls had some sort of paper peeling away, and various broken, decaying mounds of unidentifiable furniture was scattered about.  
  
“Nat.”  
  
The deep, resonating voice echoed in the tight quarters, and snapped the technician out of her thoughts.  
  
“Coming,” said Natasha as she turned away from the remains.  
  
James had already gained access to the maintenance panels. Without needing to be asked, Natasha withdrew the portable keyboard from her equipment bag and handed it to her partner. Wordlessly, the mechanic plugged in the keyboard and began typing.  
  
A list of technical information sprung up onto the diagnostic board. Reading over one of James’ broad shoulder, Nat followed along as the screen scrolled through the drone’s status.  
  
“Looks like the interior is almost completely intact,” Nat said with a sigh of relief.  
  
There was a grunt in response. “The entire armour casing is shot to hell. We’ll need a replacement for the entire thing.”  
  
“That’s better than needing an entirely new drone,” Nat replied. “Wait,” she said, reaching forward to press the keyboard.  
  
The scrolling diagnostics stopped at the display that was currently on screen. Nat narrowed her eyes.  
  
“The fuel cell is missing,” she said with a frown.  
  
“Godammit!” James growled, kicking the drone in anger. “That’s the seventh one in the last two months!”  
  
Nat stayed silent, the frown on her brow deepening. This couldn’t be a coincidence. The Chitauri must be stealing the fuel cells from downed drone. For what, she couldn’t guess, but couldn’t be anything good. Those forearm sized power sources were packed with a lot of power and she didn’t want to know if the alien scum bags had managed to figure out how to wire them up.  
  
“We should get this one back to base,” Nat said, her mind still buzzing over the implications of their find. They would have to hook up the drone to the rigging below the heli-jet and carry it back to the tower.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I’m on it,” James said as he moved to climb back out of the pit.  
  
As James loudly scrambled back up the side of the pit, Natasha decided to do a visual inspection. Something about the drones today was bothering her. Slowly, the technician began to step in a wide arc around the machine.  
  
“Hey James, what do you think-” Nat started to say but stopped mid-sentence when she looked up.  
  
James was crouched at the edge of the pit, his rifle in one hand and slicing the other hand in front of his throat to signal her to stop talking. Nat immediately tuned into the tension in his body and reached for her pistol as she hurried towards him without making a sound. She was halfway up the side of the crater when a gunshot announced the first Chitauri salvo.  
  
With a yelp, James threw himself over the side of the pit and landed beside Natasha, breathing hard to catch his breath.  
  
“Damn,” Nat swore under her breath as shots whizzed above their heads. This was going to be a tricky one. With a sight disadvantage, an out of commission defense drone, and the heli-jet out of reach, it was going to take some creative manoeuvres to come out of this one on top.  
  
“I called Peggy,” James said, indicating to his communications device strapped to his wrist. A small red light was blinking, indicating that the distress beacon had been activated.  
  
“Good call,” Nat said. “Now we just have to hold out until the cavalry arrives,” she said with a wry smile.  
  
James scowled. “Easier said than done.”  
  
Nat was about to respond when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Swiftly turning, she extended her pistol and fired three shots across the open pit to the other side. A strangled, alien cry buzzed through the air as her target went down. Clad in layers of armour, the Chitauri scum were easy to spot in the daylight, and thus usually operated at night.  
  
“One down, unknown more to go,” Nat said grimly.  
  
“I’m going to try to make it to the heli-jet; cover me,” James said under his breath.  
  
“You must be joking,” Nat deadpanned.  
  
Instead of replying, James just vaulted over the side and onto the mossy ground above.  
  
“Godammit,” Natasha swore as she pulled out her other pistol.  
  
Chilauri popped out from behind cover like ants from a nest and Natasha kept up a constant stream of plasma bullets, felling them left and right as they charged or took aim at her partner.  
  
James was half-way to the vehicle when a stray bullet caught him in the thigh, and his leg buckled under his own body weight. Coupled with his forward momentum, the loss of a standing leg caused the large man to tumble to the ground.  
  
“Fuck!”  
  
Wasting no time, Nat pushed herself over the edge and sprinted towards James, who had rolled onto his side and taken up his rifle to cover her. Reaching him in record time, the woman dove headfirst and landed with a somersault-roll, ending up crouched close to the ground and still firing shots from her pistols.  
  
Scream after vibrating, extraterrestrial scream filled the air as they took down the advancing target. The garbled, warped voices of the space scum rattled around in Nat's head, making her skin crawl.  
  
Natasha had just nailed two Chitauri in the head when she heard James yell, “Nat, behind you!”  
  
The software technician turned her head just in time to glimpse an alien raising its weapon to fire on her, and had just enough time to think: _well, this is it_ , before an echoing shot punched through the air.  
  
The alien exploded into blue mist.  
  
Wincing from the impact, Nat looked up to see two defense drone hovering in the air above them, their high-powered plasma cannons firing blazing blue shots. She watched as the mechanical spheres with their jet propulsion zoomed across the landing site, methodically picking off enemies with laser precision.  
  
Finally, after finishing a sweep of the area, the two came face to face with the human technicians. For the second time today, Natasha found herself in the crosshairs of a defense drone.

“Software Technician Four-Nine. Passcode BLACK WIDOW. Stand down.”  
  
“ _Beedoooop_.”  
  
A moment of silence.  
  
And then the drone blasted off back into the atmosphere.  
  
Natasha exhaled the tension she didn’t even realize she was holding in her shoulders – facing down a drone was not a pleasant thing.  
  
“Goddamn fucking aliens,” James spat.  
  
The technician sighed. “Let’s get you home and patched up.” If anyone had asked for her opinion, she would have said it had been too eventful today.


	3. Chapter 3

“...if we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.”  
– Ivan Turgenev

 

“Nat? James? Is everything alright?”

Nat huffed with exertion as she slammed shut the heli-jet door. “Yeah Peggy, we’re good,” she said as she pulled up the keyboard and began typing into the control panel.

“Are you sure? James activated his distress beacon and two drones were marked as ‘in combat’ at your location,” Peggy said, her voice slightly muffled by the static over the inter-orbital transmission.

Nat’s eyes flickered over the display screens as she spoke. “Ran into some Chitauri at Drone 190’s landing site, but we cleared things up. Drone defense took out most of the threats and we made it out alive.” Multitasking, she continued to type controls for an autopilot program.

“Where’s James?”

“Right here,” the mechanic grunted.

“Well, you seem to be in a mood. Get shot, did you?” Peggy teased.

“I’m still in one piece, thank you very much,” the man replied, crossing his arms over his chest with a displeased frown. James’ long hair was clumped with dirt and sweat, his uniform in about the same condition, and he looked none too happy.

“And you’re still a good team?”

James sighed, rolling his eyes. “We’re a great team, Pegs.”

The woman on the intercom chuckled. “Alright, good to hear. Well it looks like Drone 190’s beacon is still on; are you working on repairs?”

“Nah, too much damage.” James flipped a few switches and opened up a log entry. “The armour’s been cracked and a few pieces are breaking apart; 190 isn’t fit for service in this condition, so we’re bringing it back to the tower for maintenance. It’ll need some work, and we’ll need you to add a full armour plate set to the list of goodies you’re supposed to be sending to us. We’re kinda short on parts down here.”

Nat listened absently as she continued her makeshift autopilot programming.

“Hmm,” Peggy replied. “Well, we’re short of supplies everywhere, James. But I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, I’ll redistribute the surveillance paths of the remaining fleet members to plug the hole in security.”

“’preciate it, Pegs.”

“Mhmm,” came the reply. “Well, Orbital Command will be out of communications range in a few minutes; anything else to report?”

“Nope,” said James, popping the ‘p’ as he said it, and Nat tried to hide her smirk.

“I think we’re good for tonight,” Natasha replied.

“Alright then; goodnight you two. See you in the morning. Sleep tight; don’t let the Chitauri bite!”

The dashboard gave a small beep, indicating that the call had been terminated. Nat was just finishing up her impromptu program when she heard James shift in his seat and hiss with pain.

“Sit still, will you?” she said without looking in his direction. “I swear, you fidget like a child in church.”

“Are you done already?” James replied. “What are you even doing, anyways?”

“Programming,” Nat said dismissively.

“Yeah, I can see that, genius. What are you programming?”

“We have to get Drone 190 to the tower, don’t we?” said Nat. “You can’t stand with your leg in that condition, and you can’t pilot the heli-jet, so we need come up with something.”

Without giving James the chance to respond, Nat swung open her door, tapped a button on the dashboard, and jump out of the cockpit. Landing with a tuck and roll, she got up just in time to see the door on her side of the cockpit automatically sliding closed and the heli-jet lifting into the air.

The red-headed technician had to supress a laugh when she caught James’ bewildered expression as he gestured in half-panic towards her. His mouth was moving, and she could tell that he was yelling profanities at her, but through the thick plasma-proof glass and the high-pitched whine of the heli-jet engines, she couldn’t hear a thing.

Cheekily, she waved at James as the insect-like aircraft lifted into the air.

Attaching the fallen drone to the heli-jet’s transport apparatus would more difficult than usual, since James usually handled the attachment job while Nat piloted the jet. But James couldn’t stand with his injured foot, and he didn’t know how to pilot the heli-jet either, which was why Nat had to write a small autopilot program to get the jet to make itself hover over the pit while Natasha attached the drone to the rigging.

It took a bit of work, and twice as long as it normally did, but she managed to get it done. By the time she scaled the high-tensile cables back up to the heli-jet in mid-air and climbed back into her seat, James was quietly fuming in his spot.

Normally, Natasha would have teased her partner all the way back to base, but given his injured leg, she let him simmer un-harassed.

As heli-jet passed over the scenery below, Natasha told herself to breathe slowly. She loved being in the air – the earth was just so beautiful from up here, and she loved watching how the scenery gradually bled from one environment to the next. The ocean and waves crashed onto rocky beaches, the water slowly giving way to rocks and gravel, on which small patches of grass grew into rolling hills, and then farther up turned into the valley and marshes, right until the green foothills gave way to gray and brown of boulders and small trees, and finally up to the mountains that broke into towering cliffs topped with snow. It was so grand, and it never failed to remind her that she was just a small part in a much larger picture.

Sunset was just beginning, and through the cloudy haze on the horizon, Nat could just make out the silhouette of Oribtal Command dipping below the skyline. The large space station was tetrahedral in shape; it appeared to hover just beyond reach in the heavens like an ever-watchful sentinel. The glowing sun, fiery and radiant, cast the cloud peppered sky awash in light hues of lilac and rose. The mountain face, still dusted with pearly white snow, glittered noiselessly as the beams of light danced off their innumerable faces.

When they arrived at the tower, Nat spent another chunk of time detaching the drone from the jet before they were actually able to land. Once the drone was squared away in the workshop, the technician helped her partner limp back into the tower.

Stairs were difficult, and James swore profusely all the way up to the second level medical bay.

“You are such a potty-mouth,” Nat said as she handed over the antiseptic.

“Shut up,” James mumbled as he adjusted the medical bed.

The medical bay was housed in a small corner of the tower, tucked to the side of the kitchen-slash-living room area that dominated most of the second floor. The room brightly lit with white halogen lights that reflected darkly off the deep navy tiled floor, the faint scent of sterilizing fluid lingering in the air.

Reclined on the bed, James shifted until he was as comfortable as he could get. Nat heard him tearing away the fabric of his uniform pants as she searched for the surgical tools. When she turned around, medical supplies in hand, the shredded cloth had been removed, revealing the entry wound underneath the welling blood.

“You’re damn lucky it was a projectile shot and not a plasma one, or your leg would be fucking fried,” Nat said as she watched James swab the area with antiseptic.

James was too busy clenching his jaw from the stinging sterilizer to reply.

Getting a closer look at James’ leg, she could tell from the location of the puncture and the entry angle that the bullet had thankfully missed any bone. Unfortunately, the metal was still lodged into her mechanic’s thigh, and it would have to be removed before they could stitch up the hole. Grabbing the local anaesthetic and antibiotics, she carefully injected a dose of each into the thick muscle.

“This might sting a little.”

“Just get it over with,” James ground out through his teeth.

Nat worked in silence; the only sounds in the room were the clinking of metal instruments against one another, punctured with the occasional grunt of pain from her patient. The technician worked quickly; the longer the wound stayed open, the more damage and the longer it would take to heal. Once the bullet had been extracted from James’ leg, Nat coated it with a liberal helping of Medi-Spray and sewed up the hole with small, neat suture stitches.

“There, almost like new,” she said as she wiped the sweat from her forehead.

James was slightly pale, and looked slightly worse for wear, but otherwise, he would be okay. They’d be okay. They were always okay.

After tightly wrapping the injured thigh with gauze and a layer of water-proof Medi-Seal, nat helped James up from the bed. With a pair of crutches in hand, James hobbled off to the bedroom.

Nat let him go while she stayed behind to clean up. James was always a bit testy after a close call, and she knew he needed some space to get his head on his shoulders. Turning on the faucet, a warm stream of water flowed over her slender hands as she washed away the blood and grime. Nat gazed out the window as she scrubbed. It had swiftly grown dark since their return and the world outside was shrouded in darkness; it was nothing but swirling shadows and moving silhouettes. Ominous clouds rolled threateningly around their perch atop the mountain, and Nat could no longer see out over the valley.

When he was done cleaning up, James descended from the bedroom wearing a soft, faded sweater and a loose pair of sweat pants. He dropped a kiss to the top of Nat’s head as he passed by on the way to the kitchen. While the mechanic prepared dinner, it was Nat’s turn to clean up.

Dinner was quiet. The two sat across from one another at their small, glass dining table. They didn’t talk much over their meal, but then again, they didn’t really need to at this point. Just before Nat was about to start clearing away dishes, the rain started to fall.

James disappeared into the workshop; there wasn’t much he could do without the proper parts, but at least he could do a full assessment of the damage to Drone 190 and fill out a repair log entry. Nat grabbed a plush blanket and one of the reclining chairs. She pulled up to the floor-to-ceiling glass windows and curled into a comfortable ball, content to watch the rain as it sprinkled the land with life-giving water.

She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew, a hand on her shoulder was jolting her awake. Blinking at the darkness, Nat looked up to find James’ rough face peering back at her through the dimness.

“It’s getting late,” James said.

Nat yawned and stretched. “Alright,” she replied. Taking a moment to gather herself before standing, she replaced the chair from where she took it. Taking one of James’ arms over her shoulder and slipping one of her own around his back, she helped support his weight as they made their way back to the bedroom.

Just when they reached the stairs, a light musical melody chimed throughout the house.

Both the mechanic and the technician looked up in surprise, and then looked at each other. James’ brows were drawn together with concern, and Nat’s eyes had widened. That sound meant that there was a notification from the communications console.

Changing directions, Nat helped James limp over to the room that housed the computer equipment – everything from orbital communications to log archives to mapping and navigation.

James deposited himself into one of the chair and pulled up to look at the UI as Nat went about trying to find what had set off the notification. It turned out to be easy to find – in the upper corner there was a flashing icon for a new message.

Nat opened it.

_Notification:_  
_Unknown communications signal detected. Source of signal traced to 40.7127° by 74.0059°_

“That’s... that’s not one of ours, is it.”

Nat shook her head slowly. She looked at the coordinates – although she couldn’t place the exact location, it appeared to be coming from somewhere in the city ruins.

James’ expression hardened. “It’s the damn Chitauri!”

“But... what could they possibly be doing?”

Nat frowned. There was something very, very wrong about this. The technician shifted her weight from one leg to the other, and then back again. With a very concerned expression, she began typing at the keyboard.

On screen, a new window popped up and a string of analytics scrolled across the display.

Dark cocoa-coloured eyes scanned the information. The technician blanched. “The signal... it’s... heading off-planet?”

“What?!?”

“The signal... it appears to be broadcasting off-planet.”

James swore and punched the wall for emphasis, his fist landing with a deep _thud_. “What the hell are they doing?!?”

Nat blinked. She tried to recall as much as she could about their alien invaders but she was drawing a blank. The security wipe had cleared away anything she would have known about the War; their drone maintenance training had conveniently glossed over the ‘history’ section of their education and the both of them only really knew vague details.

As she understood it, the Chitauri had arrived and opened fire on the planet without so much as a warning. Some kind of seismic weapon had destabilized the plnaet’s crust, causing unprecedented earthquakes, volcanic activity, and massive tsunamis. Weakened from natural disaster, it had been a long a gruelling war for what remained of humanity’s defenses. As far as she knew, the entirety of the Chitauri race had arrived all at once; there had never been any mention of reinforces arriving since the initial attack over fifty years ago.

So just where was this signal going?

...and to what was it communicating?

Nat shivered.

“I’m going to check it out.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Not a chance; you’re hurt. Stay here; I need you to run analytics on the mainframe for me. I want to know what they’re sending out into space, but we can’t decode the message from this distance. I’ll relay the signal to the tower from the heli-jet and we can decrypt it that way.”

James grit his teeth, his strong jaw muscles working testily, but didn’t object. Nat could tell that he really, really didn’t like this idea, but it was their best option and there was nothing much else he could do about it.

Nat flew through her preparations, throwing on a new uniform and bolting out into pelting rain to the jet.

“Natasha Romanov, Software Technician Four-Nine. Passcode BLACK WIDOW,” she panted as she buckled her safety belts and booted up the engines.

The downpour made visibility poor, but Natasha sped through the valley anyways. Her blood was pumping and she had a very bad feeling. As she descended from the mountain ridge, the rain lightened from a torrential deluge to a moderate shower, the darkness of the clouds blocking the moon and starlight from the heavens. James kept her up to date from the tower, sending her analytics and writing and incident report simultaneously; Peggy was going to have a field day in the morning when she received that report.

“It seems to be a short broadcast set on repeat,” James said over the radio. “Also, according to your program, the encryption level isn’t very advanced.”

“Good. Let me know the moment the message has been deciphered. I’m getting close.”

Although she couldn’t see the decrepit buildings below her, Nat could tell that she was entering the ruins from the navigating map, and true enough, a moment later, the towering bodies of decaying giants appeared in the distance.

Nat slowed down. Now that she was near, she had to pinpoint the exact location of the signal. Starting up the triangulation program, she cruised between the concrete. Slowly, Nat zeroed in on the signal as the location radius grew smaller and smaller. Veins of water split the large ruins of the city into large pieces of a puzzle, and Nat flew over collapsed bridges as she traversed the immense wasteland.

The heli-jet reached the edge of the city; the dense buildings abruptly halted, and the aircraft left the sanctuary of the cement forest and flew out into the open. A swath of ocean opened up before her. Looking at the display for confirmation, Nat’s frown deepened. The signal was coming from the edge of the city, right where the water met the land a few kilometers to the south. Turning the heli-jet, Nat descended in altitude as she slowly approached the location displayed on her screen.

A strange collection of wreckage came into view. It wasn’t like anything she’d ever seen before. Buildings and towers populated everywhere in the main city, but here, in a large square area, there were no large buildings or any of the neatly arranged corpses of houses. Instead, the clearing was littered with what was once decaying wood. Strangest of all was the abundance of long, twisted strings of metal that crossed and threaded throughout the entire property.

“What is this place?” Nat whispered as she landed the heli-jet at the outskirts of the barely-recognizable fencing.

“I’m looking at it through the jet’s external cameras and I have no idea,” said James directly into Nat’s ear through the headpiece.

The woman walked under an arch created by the looping metal bands. “It’s... unreal,” she said as she lifted a hand to touch the rusting metal, illuminated by the headgear’s beams of light. The rectangular beams undulated and curved into and out of view like twin serpents entwined in an eternal dance, their bodies twirling up high into the air before plunging back to the ground again and again.

“You’re close. It seems to be coming from straight ahead of you.”

“Affirmative,” Nat replied.

The rain here was lighter, and she could see flecks of the individual raindrops as they flitted through the light that pierces the night. About halfway through the eerie space, she saw it.

Directly in front of her sat the warped remains of what was once the largest wheel that Nat had ever seen. When it was whole, it would have been a perfect circle, forged from metal with thick supporting spokes emanating from its very centre, and some sort of attachment was located at every point where a spoke met the outer circle. Only one or two of the attachments had survived the elements; if she didn’t know better, Nat would have said it looked like benches had been bolted to the enormous wheel. In the past, the whole contraption must have towered over everything nearby.

Now, it was bent and misshapen, a sad shadow of whatever it used to be. Rusting flakes of paint formed a thick pile underneath the whole structure, and parts of the metal had been ripped from the frame and distorted into a deadly testament to ferocity of the war.

“This is it,” Nat said into the comms. “It’s the tallest thing in the area and made entirely out of metal. They must be using this thing as some sort of make-shift antennae to amplify their signal.”

“Be careful,” James warned.

“Aren’t I always?” Nat replied with a smirk.

The technician took a moment to settle into her mission mode – a quieting of the mind to bring herself to a laser-sharp focus. Fieldwork required complete concentration; one wrong move could mean the end of her life. The Chitauri set up the signal beacon, and there was a good chance that they could still be nearby.

Cautiously, Nat scouted the area around the base of contraption before moving closer. Methodically, she worked her way closer until she was standing under the eaves of the giant wheel. It took a while longer, but finally she located the source of the signal.

“Found it,” she breathed into the radio.

A relieved sigh came through in reply.

“Good. While you were creeping around, the program decoded the message. Didn’t want to break radio silence in case you got into a pinch.”

“What’s it saying?”

“It’s a string of numbers. That’s it. I ran a bunch of your analysis programs through it but they’re turning up empty."

Nat frowned. A string of numbers? That couldn’t be right. It must be some sort of code – it had to mean something, otherwise the alien scum wouldn’t have bothered to go through the trouble.

“The only thing that I could make out was a set of coordinates, near the end of the message,” James continued. “I don’t know what it means, but I checked it out on the nav-maps. The numbers point to the middle of nowhere – there’s nothing in the area. It’s in the middle of the fields in the valley, close to the foothills on the far side of our sector. There’s literally nothing there – no ruins, nothing. Not even an incident logged within a ten kilometer radius.”

“What the hell is going on?” Nat muttered.

“I have no idea.”

“Well, I’m going to shut this thing down and head back – I want to look at these numbers. Maybe it’s some sort of program or set of instructions.”

“Maybe. Hurry up, I don’t like this.”

Nat hummed in agreement. “Neither do I.”

The technician looked at the contraption attached to the steel beam in front of her. The more she inspected it, the greater the gnawing feeling in her stomach became. She didn’t know what she had been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this. The broadcasting circuit was welded on the inside of a small box attached to one of the beams. Within the casing was a mass of exposed wires crudely soldered together; it looked more like a tangled mess of string than a complex radio device. Moreover, it looked like its creator had cobbled together scraps from the leftovers of old, pre-war human technology.

Without a second thought, Nat pulled out her plasma blaster. One shot caused the wires to melt and the box to explode.

“The signal’s gone. You got it?”

“Yep. On my way back.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone is having a great winter break! This is a few days late, but MERRY CHRISTMAS! =D
> 
> As always, this is for Aimée.  
> Plus, special shout-out to Ghost-Fish for being awesome and amazing and for keeping me alive <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for Aimée, who continues to run the best Cap blog on the whole internet.  
> And also for Ghost-Fish, who continues to keep me alive (and also pesters me annoyingly about writing all the time, which is why these updates are so fast)

“The past slips from our grasp. It leaves us only scattered things.”  
-Igor Stravinsky

  
Nat rubbed her eyes for the second time in the last five minutes. Without taking her eyes off the computer screen, she lifted her mug to her lips and took a sip of lukewarm coffee.

“Nat.” James’ gruff voice was soft and gentle in the darkness. “It’s late.”

“Just give me a few more minutes, I know I can-”

“Rest. That can wait until tomorrow.”

The red-headed woman didn’t reply. Instead, her sharp eyes scanned the lines upon lines of computer coding in front of her. She had been working on deciphering the meaning of the broadcast ever since she returned to the tower, but all her efforts thus far had been futile.

“Nat,” James said, this time slightly more firmly. “Peggy will get our report in the morning and she’ll know what to do. Until then, there’s nothing else we can do. You’ve been at this for almost two hours.” He offered her a hand. “C’mon, come to bed.”

Glancing between the proffered hand and the screen, Nat bit her lip in deliberation. “James, this is important. Why else would the Chitauri have gone through the trouble to transmit it? I need to understand what this means.”

“I agree with you; this is important. I get that Nat, I do, but seriously, you’re not going to get any further tonight, not after such a long day. I’m sure you’ll be able to figure out what’s going on tomorrow, but you need to rest first.”

Nat sighed. “Alright. Fine,” she said, taking his hand.

“Thank you,” said James, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead.

Maybe James was right. She’d been throwing everything she had at the string of numbers and she hadn’t been able to sort out what it could mean. Their only lead was that one set of coordinates pointing to the middle of nowhere.

Crawling into bed, Nat knew she was in for a long night. She never slept well when there were things on her mind. Tossing between the silk sheets, numbers floated in front of her closed eyes as a mysterious voice called through the darkness...

-8-

“We don’t know what it means.”

“Hmm.” The reply was filled with the static of inter-orbital communications. “This is very strange,” said Peggy.

Nat bounced her leg absentmindedly as she crossed her arms, her elbows leaning on the cool touch-top fibreglass of the communications console. Outside the tower’s window floated puffy, voluminous clouds, painted with amber and gold of the early morning sun. Through the night, the storm had emptied its reserves, leaving only light, airy clouds in its wake.

“We’ve put all the drones on high alert,” James said. He was sitting in the chair beside her, his long hair tied back into a loose bun. Both of them were still half changed into their uniforms; James’ silver gray shirt was undone, revealing his wide chest and a set of sculpted abs.

“Good. Keep them on high alert until we find out what’s happening. It’ll take some time to analyze this,” Peggy replied. “Have you had the chance to look at this yet Nat?”

“Yes,” she replied, looking away from the window and returning her eyes to the screens. “I worked on it for a few hours last night, but I couldn’t make any sense of it.”

“Alright. We’ll get our analysts on it up here. In the meantime, I want the two of you to perform a thorough sweep of your sector today. Patrol the boarders and secure the safety of the hydro mines at all costs. I’ll be in touch if we find anything new.”

It took only a few more minutes to finish preparations, and it wasn’t long before Nat was helping James into the heli-jet on his side of the cockpit. Overnight, the wound in James’ leg had started to heal and though he still needed a crutch to get around the house, it was in much better condition than the day before.

Soon, the two of them were rising into the cobalt blue sky, populated by gigantic, harmless clouds that bobbed lazily in the cool spring air.

As Nat and James combed through the sector, they used to onboard computer system to check in with every one of the defense drones. It took all morning and most of the afternoon to complete the sector sweep, breaking every hour or two to check on the hydro-mines. As Nat piloted the aircraft, James sifted through the scan data and drone entry log.

By the time they finished their task, Nat was becoming sore from sitting in the cockpit all day.

Landing the heli-jet on the edge of a cliff overlooking the hydro-mines, James and Nat both stepped down for a much needed stretch. They hadn’t even stopped for lunch, and Nat’s stomach grumbled noisily as she did some yoga poses to loosen her cramping muscles.

“Sounds like lunchtime,” James said, offering Nat one of two ham sandwiches and a canteen of water.

“Thanks,” Nat replied, accepting the food. She took her meager meal to the edge of the precipice before sitting down. The wax paper crinkled softly when she unwrapped the sandwich. Taking a bite, the software technician chewed quietly as she looked out over the ocean of her dying planet.

A light breeze swept up and over them, bringing the fresh scent of salt and the sea with it. Nat closed her eyes and inhaled, trying to steady the sinking feeling in her belly. The briny aroma of the ocean spray mixed pleasantly with the sweet taste of the ham sandwich, and Nat savoured the feeling of the air as it brushed gently against her cheekbones.

A gruff grunt and the sound of a heavy body landing next to her cracked the serenity of the moment. When Nat turned and opened her eyes, she smiled at the sight of James plopping down on the ground next to her.

“Everything’s real quiet today,” the mechanic said with a mouth full of sandwich.

Nat took a swig of her water. “It’s not the first time we’ve had a quiet day,” she said. And that was true – over the last five years, there had been many days with little to do but enjoy the scenery. The Chitauri lost the war, and the remnants of the alien race were on the brink of extinction. As such, they didn’t have the resources to threaten the security of the hydro-mine operation on a daily basis.

“Still. I don’t like it.”

Nat put down her half eaten sandwich. “Neither do I.”

James nodded. “Not after what happened last night.”

The technician made a sound of agreement. “I’ve had this gnawing feeling of anticipation in the pit of my stomach since last night. I just... I can’t help but feel like we’re in the middle of a storm, but we just haven’t realized it yet.”

“Yeah. Same.”

Nat sighed, turning back to the view while James took another bite of his sandwich to fill the silence.

Peggy had checked in a few times during their patrol, but still no news as to what the broadcast could possibly mean, and it bothered Nat. Surely, it couldn’t be that complicated, could it? There must have been something that they were all missing, something so simple that it eluded all their attempts to understand it. It was just a string of numbers, and Nat was convinced that it couldn’t possibly have been random. It _meant_ something, she just needed to figure out what.

Finishing up her lunch, Nat balled up the wax paper wrapping and stood, taking one last drink of water before turning back to the heli-jet.

“I want to check the coordinates you decoded from the message,” Nat said as she packed away their stuff.

“No, we should secure the perimeter first.”

“It won’t take long, less than an hour at most.”

James sighed. “The coordinates don’t fall close to the edge of the sector. It’s already mid-afternoon; if we don’t start the perimeter check now, we won’t be done by the time Orbital Command goes out of communications range, and you know that Pegs will want us to finish and report back to her ASAP.”

“But James... I just have a bad feeling about this. I want to check; just to be sure we’re not missing anything.”

Dark brows drew together, and James pursed his lips. Nat waited as he searched her expression for something, hoping that whatever he found, it would convince him to agree with her.

“Have I ever been wrong?” Nat said with a wry grin.

“I’m not opening that can of worms,” James replied, rolling his eyes. “I trust your judgement, but I think this time, orders come first. It’ll only take a few hours to complete the perimeter check, and then we can do some poking around.”

Nat pouted. “Fine.”

The two climbed back into the cockpit once more. Rising steadily into the air, Nat enlarged the sector map and reoriented towards the closest edge of the perimeter before easing the aircraft forward. It didn’t take long to reach the boundary, and as they neared it, navigations software highlighted the boarder on the screen with glaring red WARNING indicators.

“Drone Maintenance Team Four-Nine, you are approaching unsecure territory. Please re-adjust course,” said an automated recorded.

Nat sighed. “Aye-aye,” she muttered under her breath as she manipulated the controls. Gently, the jet tilted to the right and the craft swerving gently along with it until they were parallel to the boarder.

As she piloted the jet to follow the curve of the perimeter, Nat looked out through the side of the transparent cockpit. There were no obvious landmarks – no fences or outposts or markings – to denote the boundary between Sector 49 and the unsecure territory beyond it. Only the navigational programs knew where to draw the line. To her eyes, Nat couldn’t see the difference between the rolling grasses on one side compared to the other. The only real difference, she supposed, was that the defense drones protected and patrolled one side and were programmed not to cross over.

About half way through the rest of the perimeter check, a beep indicated an incoming communications.

“Nat, James, I need to ask you to interrupt your current activities.”

“What’s up, Pegs?” James asked, leaning forward in his seat.

“There’s been a lot of Chitauri activity in other sectors today, and it’s been keeping us real busy up here. We’re worried about asset security, so we’ve decided to adjust the positioning of hydro-mines FB0317 and FB0326. They’re just a bit too close to shore for comfort. Your new orders are to oversee the relocation.”

Nat and James looked at each other. Relocation? That was almost unheard of. In their entire five year deployment in Sector 49, Nat clearly remembered that Orbital Command had moved a hydro-mine only twice before – once when a freak storm had shifted something on the continental shelf under the ocean, blocking the effectivity of the water uptake of one of the mines, and once more when parts failure caused one of the mines to drop several hundred meters in hovering altitude.

“How far are we moving them?” Nat asked.

“Not far,” came the reply. “Several kilometers at most. Once we’re done, you can resume that perimeter check. Take drones 184, 192, and 195 with you; we simply can’t afford to lose any of those mines.”

James made a sputtering sound beside her. “Three drones?”

“Affirmative.”

“Pegs, I’m sorry but we just don’t have the luxury. The drone patrols barely cover the sector as it is; we can’t spare _three_ drones for a relocation.”

“Can you try plugging the gaps with Drone 190?”

“Negative. Drone 190 can fly, and its weapon systems are all go, but without armour plating, it’s just asking to be shot out of the sky.”

There was a moment of static over the communications intercom before Peggy replied. “This is a risk Orbital Command is willing to assume. The movement of the mines take precedence. Please proceed to FB0317.”

James and Nat shared a tense, worried look. “Alright,” Nat finally said as she began to change course.

As they made a beeline for the hydro-mines in question, James updated Nat on the drone positions. Three of the drones on the navigational map peeled away from their schedules courses to meet up with them. When they reached the hydro-mine, the three drones veered away from the heli-jet and automatically took up defensive positions around the lumbering mine.

“We’re in position above FB0317,” said James.

“Copy that,” Peggy replied. “Commencing relocation sequence.”

Nat kept the heli-jet hovering in place above the gigantic inverted pyramid. Moments later, even from this height, the two of them heard a deep rumble that shook the very air. On one side of the hydro-mine, four panels opened up to reveal propulsion jets. The deep rumble rose in a crescendo as the jets ignited with blue-hot flames. For all the power those jets provided, the hydro-mine moved sluggishly like a bloated animal. Crawling across the sky, the massive contraption inched along, the three defense drones circling constantly.

Once complete, the heli-jet and its three drone escort travelled north until they reached FB0326 and repeated the process. The entire time, Nat’s fingers twitched nervously at the aircraft controls. The longer these three drones were here, the longer Sector 49 remained weak to enemy offensives, and she didn’t like it one bit. Beside her, James gnawed on his fingernails as he tracked the movement of all objects in the sector.

Finally, just as the sun was beginning to dip towards the horizon, the hydro-mine relocation was complete.

“We’re going back to the perimeter check, Peggy,” James said as Nat sped them towards the point where they left off.

“Good. Please complete and submit a report once you finish. Communications will terminate in four minutes.”

“Roger that. See you tomorrow morning Pegs.”

Through the static came a soft, affectionate chuckle. “Goodnight you two; don’t let the Chitauri bite! Orbital Command, out.”

Nat exhaled loudly. There was the sound of ruffling fabric, and then she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Relax. We made it through the day,” James said.

“I know. Now we just need to make it through the night,” Nat said with a dry laugh as she veered the heli-jet towards the west.

The sky had cleared considerably throughout the day, and as the sky took on a deep, indigo hue, the stars began to blink into view. There was very little unnatural light, and the clear night made the view a sight to behold. As poisoned and polluted as the Earth was, Nat couldn’t help but fall in love with the planet.

“Wait, what’s that?”

Nat turned to look at her partner. “Hm? What’s what?”

“That,” James said, pointing out the window at the same moment that Nat saw it.

It was hard to see, and Nat squinted as she tried to make out what exactly _it_ was. A small, streaking light had appeared in the sky to the east, and at first, Nat thought it might have been a shooting star or small meteoroid. But as she looked, the object got bigger and brighter, until it was a burning amber streak across the dark palette of the night.

“Oh my god,” Nat breathed as the celestial object plummeted to Earth.

 _It must be enormous!_ Nat thought as she unconsciously halted the heli-jet and angled it to get a better view. It wasn’t the first time Nat and James had seen something caught in a decaying orbit – small meteorites and old space debris fell all the time, but normally, the objects were so small that they burned up and disintegrated into ash and dust high in the atmosphere. This object though – this one was massive! It barreled through the air and plunged ground-ward like an immense spear engulfed in flames, piercing the soft yoke of the planet.

There was a grave expression on James’ face, but his eyes were round and wide. “What the hell is that?”

“I have no idea,” Nat replied.

The two technicians could only watch in stunned silence as whatever it was broke through the lower atmosphere.

“Nat...”

Nat blinked.

“Nat, it’s... it’s coming down in our sector.”

“It’s _what_?”

A handful of keystrokes brought a tracking program onto the screen. According to the onboard computer, given the current trajectory of the falling object, it was due to land in –

“ _Fuck!_ ”

The projected coordinates matched the ones from the Chitauri broadcast.

Without another thought otherwise, Nat pushed forwards on the heli-jet controls, and the aircraft inched forwards.

James’ attention snapped away from the scene before them to stare at Nat in what looked eerily like horror. “What the hell are you doing?!”

“We have to get to those coordinates!” The broadcast must have been a set of instructions, sent to this object – what she was now realizing was a spacecraft – and the coordinates in the message was the intended landing site!

“Are you crazy? We shouldn’t go anywhere near that thing!” shouted the mechanic as he jabbed a finger at the melting sky.

“James, we have to see what that is – what this means! This is the first real threat from the Chitauri that we’ve seen since we won the war – it can’t be anything good!”

“That’s exactly why we should stay away from it! What if it’s some kind of nuclear bomb? We should just let the drones handle whatever it is.”

Nat shook her head vigorously, her silky red hair whipping about her as she did so. “No. That can’t be it. If it was, they would have called it down before they lost. No, this is... something else. We need to know what they called down and why!”

“Natasha. This isn’t some sort of game; this is serious! Let. It. Go.”

But she couldn’t. Something inside her, something deep down in her bones, told her that whatever this was, it wasn’t something she could ignore, or it would haunt her for the rest of her life. Nat fixed James with glare that contained all the ferocity she possessed.

“No,” she said, and immediately set course for the projected landing site.

“Natasha!” James bellowed, but the software technician kept her eyes trained on the sky ahead of them, steering them headfirst towards the flaming spacecraft.

The gears in Nat’s head turned as she piloted them towards the unknown. From their position at the edge of the sector, it would take them too long to traverse the distance. Gripping the controls, Nat accelerated with an eye on the screens and held her breathe as she watched the fluctuations in the calculated landing time of object and their own arrival time.

“Nat, you can’t be serious!” James screamed, “This is suicide! I can’t believe you’re honestly going through with this! LOOK AT ME, DAMMIT!”

The sound of a fist slamming into metal and plastic rung through the cockpit, but Nat didn’t flinch.

“What the hell has gotten into you?!? You’re going to get us both killed! This isn’t part of our mission directives! We’re not fucking crime scene detectives, we’re for drone maintenance! You do realize that Peggy is going to flay both our asses in the morning when she finds out about this, right?”

Nat just ground her teeth and ploughed on. As she pushed the heli-jet to the limits of its speed, the descending contraption from space dipped lower and lower towards the ground. For the life of her, the technician couldn’t figure out how it was steering itself and how it would manage to control its landing, when she realized: it wasn’t in control at all.

With growing horror, Nat’s heart almost skidded to a stop.

This was going to be a crash landing.

Only minutes later, her fear was realized.

With Nat racing to reach the site as soon as possible, they were close enough to witness the impact. The long, lance-like spacecraft struck the earth nose-first and immediately splintered, fragments of metal and chunks of equipment flying every-which way. Shrieking steel sliced through the soft, loamy earth like hot knives through butter, leaving deep, burning scars in the ground. Dirt exploded into the air and fell in a torrent, hitting the windshield in pellets that left streaks of black across the reinforced glass.

Swinging the controls wildly, Nat threw all of her expertise behind dodging the few stray pieces of debris that had blown high enough to reach them.

The last few pieces of spaceship were just as they reached the crash site. Landing as quickly as possible, Nat quickly grabbed an extra rifle and jumped out of the cockpit.

“Nat!”

The red-head whirled around, a look of deadly determination scrawled openly across her features.

James was sitting in the cockpit, leaning over the centre console with one arm stretched out through the open door towards her. Locks of long, dark hair framed a pair of wide, blue eyes. The seatbelts fastened over James’ shoulders and waist were pulled taught from their sockets, and his ash-gray uniform was left unbuttoned at the top.

“Don’t do this,” James said, almost inaudible over the groaning of bending metal and melting plastic.

Nat didn’t reply; she simply turned around and took a fast pace towards the closest piece of wreckage.

“Fuck everything,” she heard James grumble from behind her, followed by the distinct sounds of a belt unclipping and the swish of pistons that announced the opening of a heli-jet door. Moments later, James jogged into view, falling into step beside her.

“You are fucking crazy,” he muttered darkly.

As they approached, Nat surveyed the fresh wreckage.

The spacecraft had a long, tubular shape, and she suspected that the main shaft contained all the liveable space aboard – if indeed it had been a manned ship and not a remotely-controlled one. The long column had broken into five pain parts, which had all landed in a haphazard way that resembled paint splatter. Smaller fragments of metal were littered everywhere, and the whole site was peppered with fires, smouldering quietly on the ground where celestial wrath had set it aflame.

Nat rushed to the nearest fragment of the main shaft.

The huge cylinder lay half-buried in the ground like a piece of hose, its outer armour scorched black from the heat of re-entry. Sitting partly submerged in the soil, the compartment loomed over the two technicians, almost one storey high. Slinging her rifle onto her back, Nat carefully approached the inner wall. Her eyes quickly scanned the surface, finding latches, hooks, supportive beams and structures, control panels, and more.

It was clear.

This was once built to be habitable from the inside.

However, this segment was short, and after not even a handful of meters, ended in a jagged, wiry mess. Nothing in the immediate area suggested that anything was living when the spacecraft entered Earth’s atmosphere.

Nat shivered with anticipation.

What the hell was all this? And why was it here? Why did the Chitauri call down this spaceship, only to have it smashed to smithereens upon landing? It just didn’t make any sense! She knew there was an explanation – there just had to be! Nat felt that they were getting close, that all the answers were just beyond reach.

After spending a few minutes scouring the area around the first hull fragment, Nat decided to move on to the next closest one. Signalling for James to follow her, the two sprinted towards the next major piece of the wreckage.

This part of the tube hand landed almost perfectly upright, looking like a tall metallic tree trunk sprouting from the ground. Its outer hull wasn’t as singed as the previous one, and Nat’s first instinct was to walk around it. She was still trying to determine the use of this spaceship – was it a transport? Holding cargo? Part of a fleet? Was it a war ship? With weapons and soldiers?

When she rounded the opposite end, a portion of the outer wall was unharmed enough for the original paint and markings to be still recognizable.

Nat’s breath caught in her throat.

“Oh my god.”

“Nat? What is it?” James asked as he approached her.

The technician could do nothing more than raise a shaking finger to point at the remains.

There, painted clearly on the outside of the space ship, was a series of rectangles. One was a solid red rectangle, with five yellow stars in the upper left corner. Another was made of three horizontal stripes, one white, one red, one blue. A third consisted of red and white stripes with a blue patch in the corner covered with stars. Yet another featured red and white lines crossing over a blue background. A fifth was a plain white rectangle with a red dot in the centre. And underneath each one, was writing.

Human writing.

“James,” Nat whispered, her voice trembling.

“What... what is this?” the man asked, though neither knew the answer.

“You... don’t suppose the Chitauri use human letters on their spaceships, do you?” Nat asked. It was clear that it was human – the fact that the letters typed in boldface matched the ones on her keyboard was unmistakable. The technician’s mind reeled with questions, but an explosion in the distance pierced her whirling thoughts.

To the right lay another one of the other main components, and a burst of flames and gas erupted from a small unit lying at its base. Several large, rectangular shapes – storage units? – were strewn about the metal ship body.

“C’mon,” Nat said, taking off towards that section of the wreckage.

She reached one of the large rectangles near the shipwreck first. It was about two meters in length, about shoulders-width wide, and about as deep as the bathtub in their bathroom. The bottom third had been ripped open during impact, and it looked like it had been in flames until shortly before. Strangely, there was a window near the surviving end of the box; beneath the window and on the sides pf the container, it looked like there had once been writing. Beneath the scorch marks, she could make out only a few letters: ‘M. -als---rth’.

James arrived by her side a moment later, his rifle gripped tightly in his hands.

“What do you think this is?” she asked him.

“I don’t know, but I don’t like the looks of it.”

Quickly, she spied another one of these boxes nearby and sprinted the distance towards it; James followed close on her heels.

This second box looked to have fared much better, its outer casing only mildly burnt and it looked like its seal and its contents were still intact. The paint on the outside was still mostly white, and several lines of text were still legible. With an almost strangled desperation, Nat located the small window on the lid of the box and scrambled to look inside.

Time screeched to a halt, as did her heartbeat, and the blood drained entirely from her face.

Inside the window was a face.

A human face.

A very human face attached to a very human head, followed by a very human neck that was presumably attached to a very human body, hidden beyond the view of the small window.

A million new questions flooded her mind.

“What the hell,” breathed James’ deep, resonant voice.

Nat looked up from her crouched position beside the box. James was standing at her side, a look of utter confusion painted across his face. The technician looked back at the window. Below the small, transparent square, the neat, block print was legible this time: ‘J. Morita.’

They weren’t storage boxes.

These things were some sort of life pod.

With almost fervent desperation, Nat leapt to her feet. How many life pods had survived the crash? She needed to check the others. The next box was completely obliterated, its fragments smouldering to ashes; the one after that, labeled ‘G. Jones,’ was intact; the third, labeled ‘T. Dugan,’ was broken open, and Nat couldn’t bring herself to look inside.

Racing to the next one, the software technician prayed that it wasn’t mangled or destroyed. But she was unprepared for what she faced when she looked upon the small window.  
  
The face inside was longer than it was wide, made entirely of soft ridges and hard angles. A clean-shaven, very firm jaw line framed a pair of pale rose lips. A pointed, sharp nose sloped up to a strong, angular brow edged with thick eyebrows. The man’s closed eyelids were fringed with fine, golden lashes that accentuated his pale complexion. Glowing, straw blonde hair topped his head, cropped short at the sides and slightly longer on top.

Nat felt like her world was slowly turning upside-down.

It was the man from her dreams.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know the drill,  
> For Aimée,  
> and for Ghost-Fish

“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”  
\- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

The technician inhaled sharply.

“How...?” Nat whispered as feathered her hand over the top of the precious life pod.

James kneeled down on the opposite side and peered over her shoulder to look, and Nat felt the technician’s posture stiffen with shock.

The man within the pod remained as a statue: angelic, otherworldly, and motionless.

Movement: James was standing. “Nat,” he said in a stiff voice from the other side of the box; another explosion erupted in the distance.

The surroundings snapped painfully back into focus – darkness of the night sky, muted by the pale glow of smouldering embers; the heady scent of smoke and burning rubber; the yawning sound of bending metal as the structures around them crumbled beneath their own weight; the crackle and fizz of small flames as they licked the ground like the tongues of crimson snakes.

“James, we have to do something!” she said over the chaos of the impact site.

“What _can_ we do?” James shouted back. In the amber glow of the surrounding fire, the mechanic’s face was wan and pale.

“I don’t know! But these people could still be alive and-”

“The Chitauri could turn up any minute! There’s no way they could have missed something like this. If an entire group shows up, we’re screwed!”

Nat opened her mouth to argue back, but stopped short.

A soft rumble could be heard over the harsh sounds of the crash site. Both James and Nat looked to the sky, searching for the source of it, and Nat had to squint through the smoke to spot the approaching flash of a bright, fluorescent light in the sky.

It was the sight and sound of an approaching defense drone.

Nat watched as James stood, shading his eyes from the glare of the fires. His shoulders dropped a fraction with relief. “Reinforcements,” he breathed.

“Are you happy now? Help me get this pod back to the heli-jet!”

James’ eyes widened. “Are you insane?!” he exclaimed, throwing his free hand in the air in exasperation. “There’s no way in hell we’re taking this thing back with us!”

“Why not? James, these people are in danger! We have to help them!”

“No,” the man said, shaking his head and backing away. “That’s none of our business. This... none of this has anything to do with us! We need – we need to leave!”

Nat frowned. “Leave?!? We can’t just _abandon_ these people!” The technician knew that her partner had always been focused on the mission and the mission only, but this – refusing help to people clearly in need? – this was entirely new. James was tense: his shoulders were retracted high, his fingers gripped his rifle more tightly than usual; his face was pale and his cerulean eyes were wide. If Nat didn’t know any better, she might have thought that her partner looked... afraid?

Just then, the sound of hover engines broke through, and a sudden gust of wind caused the both of them to flinch. When Nat lowered the arm she used to shield her face, bright beams of light were flooding the small clearing. Levitating just a handful of meters away was a defense drone, its spotlights waving through the air like beacons. The large orb was facing away from them, but rotating slowly in place; Nat could hear the distinctive whirr and whine of its scanners and sensors sweeping the immediate area. James took a step towards the drone, just as its scanners fell upon one of the other intact life pods.

The drone played a soft chime, “ _Bing_.”

And Nat could only watch in silent horror as it fired its plasma cannons, blowing the life pod to cinders.

“NO!” she screamed as the drone located another pod, and fired once more. “No! No, no, no!”

And then the drone was facing them, its plasma guns primed and locked.

Nat froze. The drone... there’s no way it would... it was programmed not to shoot either herself or James, so why...? Then it hit her – the drone wasn’t targeting them. It was targeting – Nat’s gloved fingers tightened on the surface of the life pod beneath.

“Stop!” Nat cried, springing to her feet and flinging her arms out protectively.

The technician could practically _feel_ the drone’s gaze as its scanners examined her.

“Software Technician Four-Nine. Passcode BLACK WIDOW! Stand down!” she shouted.

“ _Beedoooop_ ,” the drone replied, but didn’t retract its guns. The hair on the back of Natasha’s neck stood on end.

Instead of standing down, the drone pivoted in an arc around Nat until her body was no longer obscuring the pod behind her, and the technician’s blood turned to ice as she heard the machine’s scanners start up once more.

“No!” Nat scrambled to block the drone’s line of sight. “Software Technician Four-Nine. Passcode BLACK WIDOW!” she yelled, “Stand down!”

Again, the drone beeped, and again, the drone pivoted around her.

“Passcode BLACK WIDOW! Stand down! I said STAND DOWN!”

The drone seemed to hesitate for a moment.

And then the telltale, high pitched whine of the plasma core preparing to fire filled her ears.

“She said STAND DOWN you fucking piece of trash!” came a fierce bellow, and suddenly the drone’s lights went out and it fell to the ground with a _thunk_.

Out from behind the drone walked James, holding what looked like a power cell in his hands, bare wires and pieces of metal still attached. Nat’s legs turned to jelly, and she sank to her knees.

“Thanks.”

“Let’s just get out of here before more trouble shows up,” James growled in return.

“I – yeah, okay.” Gathering her strength, Nat made to stand. This time, she didn’t even bother asking for help. She simple gripped the life pod in her hands and began dragging it towards the heli-jet. With a grim expression, James appeared to help her.

It didn’t take long to drag the precious pod back to the heli-jet. Getting it inside, however, was a different story. Nat supposed she could have just strapped it to the underbelly of the aircraft, but she was feeling over-protective, and insisted on storing it within the cabin. The heli-jet was small, and it was designed to be compact, but it was also designed to carry an injured person, should the need arise. Both of the cockpit chairs had the ability to fold down, giving access to a small space just large enough to house a stretcher, and as luck would have it, the life pod barely fit where the stretcher normally lay.

Nat steered them towards the tower.

As they withdrew from the crash site, the darkness and stillness of the night surrounded them. The heavens were clear, and a crescent moon hung stoically amongst thousands of glittering diamonds; it seemed to Nat as if the world was utterly indifferent to what had just transpired.

When they landed, James helped Nat drag the pod from the heli-jet into the tower and up the stairs, into the main living room without saying a word. His face was taught and his body was still tense.

The living room was faintly lit by several side lamps, and the soft fluorescent glow illuminated the steel furniture and white tiles with a bluish hue. Nat hastily removed her gloves as she fell to her knees beside the pod. Hesitant, she brushed her fingers against the outer casing with reverence. Peering through the window, the man looked completely undisturbed by the move from the wreckage. Beneath the tiny window, neat block letters spelled out a name: ‘S. Rogers.’

“That tech looks ancient,” James said. The mechanic had removed his uniform jacket, his sweat-stained tank top clinging to his torso as he leaned against the doorway. Dirt and soot clung to the limp strands of his dark hair, and he wore a dark, guarded expression to match.

“I don’t know how it’s possible but... it looks pre-war,” Nat said as she searched for a way to open the pod.

James grunted.

“It’s some kind of life pod, I think.” Upon closer inspection, Nat found what seemed like a computer screen and a set of buttons.

“Cryo-stasis, if I had to guess,” James said, crossing his large, muscular arms over his chest.

“Did they have that kind of technology back then?”

The mechanic shrugged.

Nat pressed one of the buttons, and the screen activated. Numbers and small, tiny charts appeared, and it took the technician a moment to realize that they were vitals. The man was still alive! Pressing more buttons, Nat somehow activated a menu screen and began opening the different options. Halfway through the menu items, she found what she was looking for.

‘Activate Resuscitation Protocol?’ was displayed on the small device.

Nat looked up at James. “He’s alive; I’m going to wake him.”

James pushed away from the doorway with an alarmed expression. “What?! Nat, don’t! We should wait until morning! Peggy will know what to do once we’ve given her a report, we should’t-”

But it was too late. Nat pressed the indicated ‘yes’ button, and immediately, the pod began to stir. The hiss of decompressing air filled the living room and a deep hum came from the pod.

The mechanic rushed to Nat’s side, but there was nothing he could do to reverse it. Gripping her shoulders tightly, James turned his partner to face him square on. Nat watched as blue eyes searched her face for something – whether he found what he was looking for or not, Nat couldn’t say.

James’ large Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed thickly. “I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into,” he said.

The pod continued to hum, and Natasha spent the better part of the next ten minutes trying to figure out what it was doing. She didn’t want to tamper with the pod, fearing that it would disrupt its cycle and lose the man’s life in the process. In the end, she realized that the pod was slowly heating, and sat back with a sigh of relief. She didn’t know exactly how long it would take for the machine to heat to the right temperature and thaw the man inside, but Nat didn’t intend on leaving his side until it was done.

While she waiting, James had disappeared into the communications room to file an incident report. After much argument, Nat convinced him to leave out any mention of the survivor – at least, until they knew more. James was reluctant, but Nat insisted. A gnawing feeling was growing in the pit of her stomach. It’s not that she didn’t trust Peggy, because she did. But the fact that the defense drones had openly fired on humans – even almost firing on her – made her uneasy.

Nat was caught up in her thoughts when a short beeping emanated from the pod.

“James!” she called, and the mechanic rushed into the room just as the pod let out a long, whining hiss of air. On creaking hydraulics, the lid of the pod lifted from the base. A hairline crack appeared in the lid, and a moment later, some sort of locking mechanism released, and the lid separated into two pieces. As the two halves opened, they revealed a torso clad in a clean, white t-shirt and legs wearing soft, course looking sleep pants.

For the first time, Nat had the opportunity to look upon the face of the man who had haunted her dreams, unobscured. As she studied his features, Nat felt a very strange feeling coursing through her. It was both so familiar, and yet so foreign.

Tearing her eyes away from his sleeping visage, Nat looked down over his body, checking for damage. The face was attached to a strong neck, which was anchored to a pair of broad shoulders and a wide, muscular chest that rivaled James’. The chest tapered down to a trim waist and thick, chorded thighs ending finally in large, bare feet. Nat was relieved to find no visible harm on the man’s person.

Wordlessly, slowly, almost unintentionally, Nat reached into the pod with one hand, anxious to see if the man was still alive. With alarm, she realized that he wasn’t breathing. She was about to reach for the man’s wrist, to check for a pulse, when the man’s eyes flew open.

In one fluid motion, the man sat up as he took in a gasping breath.

When the man started coughing, his humongous shoulders heaving, she moved to his side and rubbed his back, trying to ease his discomfort. James was on the other side of the pod in an instant, and the two of them held the man as his coughing fit eased and dissipated,. Sagging back into their arms, the man’s breathing settled back into a heavy rhythm.

With his head lolling back, the man’s pale eyelids fluttered, and the bright blue eyes beneath them seemed clouded and unfocused. The two technicians crouched there for a minute as the man caught his breath between them, his inhales rasping and hoarse. Slowly, the man’s eyes seemed to adjust, and for a moment, they focused on the two people hovering over the pod.

Pale, rosy lips parted. “...Bucky?” whispered the man, just before his eyes flickered shut, lost into unconsciousness.

Nat and James looked at each other.

James frowned. “Who the hell is Bucky?”

-8-

Natasha and James moved the man – this S. Rogers – to the medical bay. He was heavy and it took some tricky manoeuvering, but they managed. The red-headed woman felt much better after she had finished linking the man to their medical equipment. The displays now showed blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, and all sorts of other medical measurements, and Nat felt safer knowing she could monitor the man’s vitals.

James made dinner, but Nat refused to leave the man’s side as he slept, so they ate on the counter in the medical bay. The mechanic had just returned from putting away the dishes when there was a hitch in the man’s breathing.

Springing from her seat in alarm, Nat was immediately by the side of the medical bed.

A moment later the man groaned softly. An eye cracked open, followed by the other.

“Nng.”

“Hey, easy,”

The man opened his mouth and inhaled slowly. His eyes opened a bit wider, and this time his vision seemed focused.

Nat grabbed the glass of water that was sitting on the side table. “Here, you must be thirsty.”

Giving her a glance, the man made a weak nod, so Nat slowly lowered the glass to his pale, cracking lips. It seemed to take all of his concentration to drink, and after a few swallows, Nat pulled back and placed the water back on the table.

“What... where am I?”

Nat was quiet for a moment, trying to decide on a response, before saying, “You’re... on Earth.”

S. Rogers looked at her and regarded her for a moment.

“I’m Natasha, and that’s James,” she said gesturing herself and then to where the mechanic was leaning against the doorway. Her partner had his arms crossed over his chest again, and he wore a grave expression on his face, the corners of his mouth pulled down at the corners.

The man’s gaze fell upon James.

“What’s your name?” Nat asked softly.

Blue eyes moved to Nat’s face. “Steve.”

Steve. Even just the _sound_ of the name felt right. “How are you feeling?” Nat asked next.

Steve seemed to look around, absorbing his surroundings. “Tired.”

The woman nodded. “I’m sure you must be. You should rest.”

“What... what happened?” asked Steve.

Nat shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “This... is going to be hard to hear but... You were in a crash; your ship made an uncontrolled landing not far from here. James and I... we managed to pull your cryo-stasis pod from the wreckage but... the rest of the crew didn’t make it.”

Steve’s brow creased, and he frowned. “What do you mean?”

Nat looked down. “You’re the only survivor.”

Clear, blue eyes twitched between her and James. “I don’t... I don’t understand.”

James pushed away from where he was leaning and approached the bed. “Your ship was called down from space by an unknown broadcast. You crash landed, and you’re the only crew member left alive. Everyone else is dead.”

Nat shot her partner a withering glare. _Way to be subtle._ James wasn’t fazed.

Steve shifted on the bed. With effort, he tried to push himself up with his elbows, but Nat placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Don’t overexert yourself, you might get hurt. You’ve been in cryo-stasis for a very long time,” she said, guiding him back onto the pillows.

A concerned expression blossomed on Steve’s face. He swallowed audibly. “How... how long?”

“About seventy years, we figure,” James said.

Steve blinked owlishly, and his breathing accelerated until he was hyperventilating. “Sev-Seventy years?”

“It’s okay, you’re safe now,” Nat said, trying to calm the man before he worked himself up into a panic.

“No, I... I have to get back to my ship...!”

James ground his teeth. “There’s nothing left of your ship.”

Steve’s eyes shot to the man who had spoken; in the background, the heart monitor’s beeping increased as the man’s heart rate spiked.

Nat turned to face James with an icy glower. “Steve must be hungry after being in cryo-stasis for so long; James, there should be a bowl of soup left in the fridge.”

The two technicians stared each other down for a minute before James broke eye contact and slunk towards the kitchen.

“Sorry about him,” Nat said, turning back to Steve. “It’s been a rough week, and things haven’t exactly been going well. He’s not normally this... irritable.” She tried to smile. “Would you like some more water?”

Steve nodded, and Nat helped him drink. When he was done, the golden-haired man fixed Nat with a steely look full of determination. “I have to get back to my ship, I need-”

“Steve, I’m sorry, but it’s gone.”

His look didn’t waver. “I need to retrieve the flight recorder from the wreck,” he said quietly, his voice full of conviction.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, we can-”

The sound of James’ returning footsteps made her pause, and when the mechanic appeared in the doorway, Nat closed her mouth.

James entered and handed Nat the warm bowl of soup he was carrying. He gave her a disapproving scowl and then retreated to the corner of the room. Nat busied herself with adjusting the bed so that Steve was lying at a comfortable angle from which to eat. Positioning a tray with the soup in front of him, the man ate slowly.

“Steve, can I ask you a question?”

Pausing with the spoon half way to his mouth, the man looked at Nat. He studied her for a moment before nodding.

“What were you doing up in space? Were you on some kind of... mission?”

Steve set his jaw. “I can’t answer that. It’s classified.”

“I see.”

Steve dipped his spoon back into the soup.

“I looked up your ship on our databases.”

Two pairs of eyes tracked to James, in the corner.

“There’s no record of it in any of our archives.”

Steve didn’t reply. For several minutes, the only sound in the room was the clinking of the metal spoon against the porcelain bowl and the hum of the medical equipment.

James stepped out of the shadows. “What. Was. Your. Mission.”

“I said it’s classified,” the man returned, grinding his teeth and gripping his spoon.

“Bullsh-”

“James!” Nat said, holding up a hand to stop him. Why James was acting like such a bully, she couldn’t guess.

When the mechanic didn’t make any move to disobey, Nat took a seat on the bed beside Steve. “A lot has happened in seventy years,” she said to fill the silence. “I’m sorry you to have to tell you this, but while you were in cryo, Earth was attacked.”

Steve looked into Nat’s eyes as concern fell over his face.

“Aliens. The Chitauri. We’re not sure exactly where they came from, but they didn’t even give us the chance to greet them.” Nat looked down at the woven blanket that they had draped over their guest’s legs. “All-out war. It was hard, long, and brutal, and by the time we’d won... well, let’s just say there were heavy casualties, and not all of them were lives. Basically, the planet’s decimated. Uninhabitable. Everyone who survived has either been relocated to Titan – one of Saturn’s moons – or on the space station preparing to go. Well, except for us and the people on Orbital Command.”

When Nat glanced up, Steve was staring at her with a lost look on his face.

“I know it’s a lot to take in.”

"You've been through a lot today," James said, coming to stand beside Nat. "We understand if you want some time alone." The mechanic took her hand and gave Nat a light tug, urging her to rise from the bed. As she did so, James laced their fingers together.

Steve's look of confusion deepened, his brows drawing tightly together.

Nat tried to smile sympathetically. “It's safe here. You should rest.”

After closing the sliding doors to the med bay, James led Nat up to their bedroom. Exhausted from the day, Nat collapsed into one of the chairs by the window. Looking down, she realized that she was still wearing her soiled uniform. The once clean gray outfit was now singed in some places and streaked with dirt and charcoal.

In the background, she heard James stripping out of the remainder of his uniform and step into the bathroom. Nat didn’t follow.

When James returned several minutes later, clean and wearing his pajamas, Nat was still deep in thought.

“C’mon, your turn.”

Natasha continued staring out the window.

“Nat.”

“Do you remember anything?”

An exasperated sigh. “I told you. I’m not having this conversation again.”

“Do you remember... him?”

Silence.

Footsteps, approaching.

A hand on her shoulder.

“It’s not our job to remember, Nat.” James’ voice was raw and stiff. “Our job is to protect the hydro-mines. That spaceship? A Chitauri broadcast brought it down. We don’t know who – or what – he is. Go get cleaned up; we’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't hate me @_@


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always,  
> For Aimee, who has the best Cap blog on the internet (seriously Aimee your blog is probably 50% of the reason why I check tumble every 5 seconds, literally everything you post gives me life)  
> And also for Ghost-Fish  
> Not only for being in-general awesome, but also for saving my butt this week by bringing me drugs (aka Tylenol) when I was bedridden and dying from some ungodly plague. Seriously, it was so gross and I felt like shit but Ghost-Fish got me through it. Thank you my dear <3

 

 

“Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges  
and the infinity in which he is engulfed.”  
\- Blaise de Pascal

Nat woke with a start, the echoes of her dream quickly fading into the recesses of her mind.

Looking to the other side of the bed, James was lying on his back, sleeping soundly. Long, dark hair spilled across the pillow like threads of silk. In his slumber, the mechanic had thrown one arm above his head while the other rested on top of the sheets, across his stomach. In the dim, the last vestiges of starlight sparkled across the man’s lightly tanned skin and the chords of his muscles, twitching absently in his slumber.

The cold air in the room nipped at Nat’s skin; the thin layer of sweat cooled quickly, and it made her shiver. Careful not to wake her partner, Natasha slipped out of bed. Her bare feet padded soundlessly across the tile as she approached the glass wall. Dawn was just beginning, and though the sun had not crested yet, the sky was ablaze with lavender and rose. Clad in a tank top and short-shorts, the conditioned air sent cool prickles up and down her arms and legs.

The technician was contemplating whether she should try to get another hour of sleep or begin preparing for the day when a noise from below met her ears. Moving in silence, Nat entered approached the stairs and descended into the living room.

Immediately, she spied Steve. The large man was wearing the same plain white undershirt and track pants that he was the night before.

“Going somewhere?” Nat said.

At the sound of her voice, Steve jumped and turned to face her. It would have almost been comical, had the circumstances been different.

“Couldn’t sleep?” she asked.

The man shook his head. The pair of crystalline blue eyes followed her closely as she moved across the room. Nat could tell from the tension in Steve’s shoulders that he was on high alert. He didn’t trust her, and all of her training was telling her that this was a man who was ready to spring at a moment’s notice.

“Me neither,” Nat said as she turned to the kitchen. “You hungry? I’m making breakfast.”

The technician didn’t wait for a reply as she left the room. After a few moments, she head soft footsteps following behind her. Steve watched her warily the entire time they were in the kitchen, and even still when they were seated at the small glass dining table.

Natasha was patient. Steve looked like he needed some time and space to process – after all, waking up 70 years in the future is hardly something one bounces back from overnight – so she kept her mouth shut and waited until the man was comfortable with talking. They ate without saying a word, and as the technician put away the dishes, Steve stood by the window, looking out over the landscape with a distant expression.

“Steve?”

Steve turned away from the scene of fluffy orange and violet clouds to face her.

“What was it like? Earth, I mean. Before the war.”

The man opened his mouth to respond, but stopped short, his brows pinching together. “I... I’m not sure how to explain. I guess it’s hard for me to say what it was like when I don’t even know what’s changed,” he said, turning back to the view. “It’s hard to believe this isn’t all some kind of...”

“Dream?” Natasha supplied.

Steve grunted. “Something like that.”

It was intended to sound casual, Nat suspected, but there was something in the way the man said those words that made her suspect that he meant something different.

The man crossed his large, muscular arms across his broad chest. “I need to get back to my ship.”

Nat sighed. “Steve, we told you last night, there’s nothing left of-”

“That’s not what I mean,” he said, shaking his head and uncrossing his arms. “I know there’s probably no signs of life, but I need to get my flight recorder.”

“Your what?”

“Flight recorder. It’s a small machine that logs the ship’s events and stores the information in a specially sealed device.” Steve turned to face her, a hard, determined expression painted on his visage. “I need to get my flight recorder; it’s very important.”

He didn’t explicitly say the words, I need to find out what happened to my ship, but Nat understood that it was what the man meant anyways.

The technician looked at the clock. James would be awake in about hour or so, and Orbital Command would still be out of communications range for longer. Tapping her chin, Nat took a moment to deliberate.

“Alright, but we have to be quick.”

Steve replied with a firm nod.

It took only minutes for Nat to suit up and not much longer to get Steve into a uniform too. Though he was marginally taller than James, the technician had a feeling that one of the mechanic’s gear would fit just fine, and she was right. Seeing Steve clad in the gray jacket gave Nat a strange feeling, and she tried to push it aside as they strode down the platform towards the helijet.

Getting into the aircraft was the easy part. Once they were seated and Nat had booted up the computer system, the technician realized one small problem just before it arrived. Nat’s mind was racing through possible solutions when the words, OPERATOR IDENTIFICATION, flashed up on the screen.

“Natasha Romanov, Software Technician Four-Nine. Passcode BLACK WIDOW,” Nat said as she pulled out a keyboard and began typing.

The chirping acceptance chime played, acknowledging Nat’s response, but the screen in front of Steve, who was sitting in James’ usual place, was still flashing.

“I don’t suppose this thing will allow you to fly solo, will it?” Steve asked, eying the screen dubiously.

“Well, technically it does, but there’s weight sensors in the seats so as long as you’re sitting in the cockpit, it’ll register a second operator and require sign in.

“Well then.”

The technician’s fingers flew across the keyboard, her bright eyes flying across the lines of code that she was manipulating.

“Alright, that should do it.”

Just as she finished her sentence, the acceptance chime played once more, and the screen in front of Steve turned green and cleared up.

“There,” Nat said with a smile. “And now, we go!”

The heli-jet, under Nat’s expert guidance, lifted gracefully into the early morning air. Nat wanted to be as fast as possible, mainly to lessen the amount of time James would have to stew over what they were doing, but the skies were clear and the world was quiet, so she didn’t need to spend all her attention on piloting. As she flew them towards the scene of last night’s crash, Nat took the liberty of stealing glances at Steve.

The large, hulking man seemed curled in on himself as he stared out the window, taking in his first view of the world in over seventy years. Nat wondered what he was thinking, what could be going through his mind at a time like this. It must not have been easy, to wake one day and find that everything you’ve ever known was gone, washed away by the inevitable march of time.

Steve must have sensed something, because halfway through the flight, he turned to look her straight in the eye. Unafraid to back down, Nat held his gaze for almost a full minute before needing to avert her attention back to piloting.

“Nice morning for a flight, huh?” Nat said to break the silence.

Silence.

Sighing, the technician dropped it. The man would open up to her on his own; it wasn’t something that she could force, even though she desperately wanted answers. The flight was smooth, with no interruptions.

The impact site looked far worse in broad daylight than it had the night before, shrouded in shadows and fading light. The space ship and torn a deep gash into the Earth’s surface, and the charred, blackened ground looked foreboding. Chunks of metal stood standing and debris littered the site in a wide arc.

Nat set down the heli-jet near the place where they had found Steve’s pod – she figured that this was as good as any place to start their search. As the engines were cooling down and Steve was unbuckling his belts, Nat reached into the back.

“Here,” she said, thrusting something into the man’s arms. “You can never be too careful. You know how to shoot a gun, right?”

Steve gave her a look.

“Great! That’s the safety, there’s the trigger, clip goes in here – click that to release – and you’re set! Capisce?”

The man rolled his eyes and nodded.

“Excellent!” Nat shot him her best smile before opening the door.

Steve stumbled out of the cockpit, and the scene of the crash seemed to send him into a daze; the technician watched with sympathy as the man almost tripped and fell to his knees. It occurred to her again that hearing something and seeing it with your own eyes, feeling it viscerally in the pit of your stomach are two very, very different things.

“What’s it look like?” Nat asked.

-8-

It took just over an hour to locate the flight recorder, which was already quite fortunate for them, in Nat’s opinion. Judging from the impact area and the debris scatter, it could have taken them a week to find it, but whatever gods there were happened to smiling upon them, it seemed. It was larger than she was expecting, although really Nat didn’t have much to go on save for Steve’s description. Encased in a fire-proof, water-proof material, the metal box was about the side of a laptop, only it was much thicker. Yellow and black stripes were painted across the sides, and large block warning labels plastered the entire vessel.

Nat’s hunch had been right – the recorded had been stored in the same ship compartment that the life pods were located, which considerably increased their chances of finding it quickly. In the end, they had to dig it up out of the ground, lodged as it was in the wiring of a detached control panel that had been buried in the loose earth.

Steve had been quiet for the entire search, speaking only to give instructions, but Nat again couldn’t blame him. The man had shouldered the plasma rifle she had given him as he hugged the precious flight recorder to his chest; he didn’t look like he would be letting go any time soon.

Getting back into the heli-jet, Nat booted up the engines and launched back into the sky. The sun had just fully cleared the horizon, and it was looking to be a fine, brisk spring day.

“I know you have a lot of questions,” Steve said, looking down at the box that was cradled in his arms.

Nat raised an eyebrow. “Not if you’re uncomfortable answering anything,” she replied. “And besides, you’ve probably got more questions than me.”

Steve shrugged.

“We’ll take turns. And since you look like you’re feeling shy, I’ll go first. Who exactly are you?”

The man sitting on the other side of the cockpit shifted uncomfortably. Nat got the feeling that it wasn’t like Steve didn’t trust her, it was just that he didn’t trust anything until he could figure out what was going on.

“Steve Rogers. Captain. Astronaut. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York.”

The answer was curt, and didn’t give anything away. Had Steve been some sort of spy in a past life? Because she swore that he played the information game just as well as any. Most importantly, his answer gave her no clues as to the real question Nat was trying to answer.

Of course, the technician didn’t give any of this away; she smiled as she said, “Mmm, now that wasn’t so hard, was it? Brooklyn... what was that like?”

“I thought we were supposed to be taking turns,” Steve said.

Nat laughed. “Right you are! Fire away, Captain!”

The woman swore she caught the corner of Steve’s lips twitch. “Same question as you.”

Nat nodded. “That’s fair. I’m Natasha. Natasha Romanov. I’m a software technician, I program shit. We may have won the war against the alien scum, but they’re still kicking around, so James and I are here to help with the clean-up crew. We’ve been here almost five years, and in a few weeks, we’ll be finished our term. We get to go back.”

Nat looked over to find Steve watching her, something unreadable in his expression.

“And that’s about it. There’s not much else for me to tell you, and I probably couldn’t, even if I wanted to,” Nat said sadly. “The memory wipe pretty much got rid of everything else.”

“Memory wipe?” Steve’s blue eyes had gone round.

“Ah, ah, ah, it’s my turn to ask a question. So, Brooklyn?”

“No, hold, up, memory wipe?!” Looking over, the technician saw that Steve had sat forward in his seat, a look of disbelief on his face.

Nat shrugged. “It’s a security thing. In case one of us gets captured. We can’t spill secrets that we don’t know. All operatives get the memory wipe before we’re sent down from Orbital Command.”

The blonde sat back, crossing his arms over his chest as his brows drew together. “So... you don’t remember... anything? From before you were sent down here?”

Nat bit her lip. The hum of the heli-jet engines filled in the background of an otherwise silent flight. The sun, free from the eastern horizon’s grasp, was in full bloom, shining bright light over the valley. How truthful was she willing to be with a man she’d only just met yesterday? There was no way of knowing if she could trust this man, and yet...

“I’m not supposed to remember anything. But.”

She paused.

“For some reason... You seem very... familiar. Like I knew you, once. To be completely honest?” – and here, Nat turned to look Steve in the eye as she said the words – “You’ve been haunting my dreams ever since I landed on earth, five years ago.”

It seemed to take Steve a moment to process what she’d said. His forehead was creased with concentration and his eyes searched her expression as he seemed to puzzle through her words.

“You... remember me.” The deep, resonant voice was surprised and... relieved?

“Well. Not really,” Nat said, tearing her eyes away from him only because she was still piloting the jet. “I remember your face. And the sound of your voice. But I don’t know who you are, or why you’re so... familiar.”

Steve seemed to take a few more minutes to process this.

“What about... What about James?”

Though she kept facing forwards, she raised an eyebrow. Honestly, she had not been expecting the question. “James? Funny you should ask. He hates it whenever I bring it up, whether it’s the dreams or the past. He seems adamant not to look back. He insists that he doesn’t remember anything, that he doesn’t dream of the past, like I do, but part of me wonders if he’s telling the truth, or if he’s lying to himself as much as he’s lying to me,” she said with a soft voice.

The technician remembered when they first landed, the thrill and the joy that she felt being back on their home planet, the feeling of the atmosphere around her and the ground beneath her feet. James had never had the same sort of excitement, that wanderlust that seemed to make each breath and each step something new. James had always been... stoic, to say the least. Quick to anger, and singularly focused on the mission. Natasha had always chalked that up to James’ steadfast personality, but she’d never before considered that the mechanic might not have always been this way.

There was a strange expression on Steve face, one that the heli-jet pilot was finding difficult to read. It was a mix of so many complex emotions, it was hard to grasp what Steve must really be thinking.

Wondering if their little game was over, Nat was about to ask when the communications console blinked, and a voice spoke over the intercom.

“Natasha FUCKING Romanov, what the HELL do you think you’re doing??? And where the fuck is the stray you picked up yesterday?”

Whoops.

“Good morning James,” the woman sighed. “Looks like you woke up on the grumpy side of the bed today.”

“I’m not in the fucking mood, Nat; where the hell are you?”

Nat rolled her eyes. “When are you ever in the mood?” she muttered under her breath, too quiet for the microphone to pick up, but apparently not quiet enough for Steve, who snorted softly.

“Don’t get your underwear tied in knots; we’re on the way back.”

“Where the hell did you go?”

“The crash site. Steve just wanted to look around. Don’t worry, we didn’t get shot at or anything.”

A frustrated sound came as a reply.

“We’ll be there in less than five minutes, just have some breakfast and we’ll be there in no time.”

James merely grumbled before hanging up.

 


End file.
